


closing conditions

by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Air travel, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Corporate, Alternate Universe - Lawyers, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Biglaw, Blow Jobs, Bottom Kylo Ren, Dirty Talk, Evil Law Boyfriends, Evil Space Boyfriends, Hux Is Critically Dehydrated, Inappropriate Use Of A Tie, Kylo Ren: Ace Attorney, Kylux Big Bang 2018, Literal and Metaphorical Volcanic Activity, M/M, Mile High Club, Praise Kink, The Securities and Exchange Commission, The thirst is real, Weather, a deeply flawed understanding of cross-border M&A and European antitrust regulation, just kidding he's the worst, the barest gossamer threads of plot fluttering above a wretched hive of porn and villainy, what even are condoms anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 11:49:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16912320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: Yes, he remembers Kylo Ren, in painfully intimate detail:  the scrape of his hands, the heat of his body. He’s spent more than a year trying to forget, trying to avoid him, building the wall between his matters and Ren’s, and for a time he was successful. No longer.“You should really check your email,” Ren says. “If we’re going to work together.”Or:  Kylo Ren is a menace. Hux still wants to fuck him into next Tuesday.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Friends, Romans, countrymen: this fic is chaos. When I started working on this, I thought I wanted to write about securities regulation. And airports. Actually, what I wanted was to write a lot of vaguely suit-y sex scenes interspersed with unnecessarily purple prose and baffling inscrutable dialogue, and here we are today, many months and synonyms of the word ‘thrust’ later. 
> 
> Heartfelt thanks to my good and patient artist, [EmberSHx](%E2%80%9Cembershx.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D), who was such a help with brainstorming, who put up with all of my last-minute changes to the outline, and who produced the lovely art linked below and embedded herein! 
> 
> Thank you also to the mods for all of their hard work. Many melons died for this ~~information~~ fic. 
> 
> Click [here](http://embershx.tumblr.com/post/180931787258/my-half-of-the-kylux-big-bang-project-gonna) to view EmberSHx’s artwork for this fic!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What little Hux remembers of the Kuala Lumpur sky is a dim polluted blue, latticed with New Year’s lanterns. Their paper has long since faded to orange beneath the sun and the dust; now they seem to drift in the shadows of the trees growing behind the alley wall, boughs heavy with bright rubbery green leaves, a cascade of hanging teardrop emeralds. The air is heavy with the smell of car exhaust. He stands crammed between the bumpers of two parked cars, looking out at the street where backpackers are flitting past the gap in ones and twos. He has an odd sense of unreality, of watching grainy old images click by on a slide projector in a darkened room. A young man all alone in chambray, bracelets flashing on his wrist; a couple, laughing, in bright primary colours, linked by their fingers, index to ring. Distantly, he hears the noise of traffic. Two women next, swinging pink plastic bags of hawker stall food from their wrists. And click, gone:  _Next slide, please._

 

The muted grey haze of memory dissipates. Fluorescents now. The lanterns dull and shrink and harden into metal birdforms, hanging from the high pale ceiling of Kuala Lumpur International Airport in long fluid rows. Taken together, they give an impression of a hawk in flight. Individually, they are in need of a good polishing. Hux sighs and turns back to the tar-black surface of his coffee, and next to it, laid flat on the table, the glowing white screen of his smartphone.

 

The message hasn’t changed, hasn’t softened at all in the interim. It is neither beautiful nor harmonious. It does not, like the lanterns, convey any hope for a prosperous new year ahead.

 

It says, _Your failures are mounting._

 

It says, _Do not disappoint me again._

 

The Tannoy system deploys an announcement in three languages, watery and distant. A passenger is paged. The kinetic sculpture roils overhead, rising and falling, rising and falling, casting dancing reflections in his cup like motes of bronze dust, like autumn leaves. Hux scrolls down.

 

It’s a short thread. Email, protest, ultimatum. _You remember Kylo Ren_ , it begins.

 

Hux lifts his cup, sips. Tastes nothing but ash.

 

 

 

 

His gate opens, and Hux joins a line for the final security check that seems to have materialised out of nowhere. His phone feels heavy in his back pocket; he imagines it glowing, malevolently, like a coal in a dying hearth. London calling.

 

Some people stumble into their careers, say they never intended for these things to happen, went to school for art, trip and fall and pick themselves up again, finding their way through a series of contingencies. Hux, on the other hand, has planned his life down to the last brittle detail and spent thirty-odd years in the execution of it. He has never stumbled—not once—not even under the brutal open-palmed slap of his father’s hand plummeting down on his shoulder:  _This is my boy._

 

 _Thirty years!_ Hux thinks, adjusting his clammy grip on his backpack as he edges forward; his skin slides over the nylon with a squeak. The backpack is monogrammed:  _SGS_. Sloane Gallius Snoke, the law offices of.

 

Thirty years of planning, and a good twelve or thirteen of those years spent plotting, fantasizing—about stiletto blades sliding between ribs, into unguarded flesh, about poison, about ends swift and slow—only to have it all swept away by chance.

 

Brendol Huxley:  dead at sixty, found slumped at his desk. A heart attack, they said, and overwork, and drink. Hux had only just turned twenty-seven, and fate had made him a present.

 

 _If you’ve nowhere to go_ , Snoke said, meaningfully, when Hux came to collect his father’s things, and his withered face was like a skull. They drew up a contract there and then. Hux signed his new name on the dotted line, and he watched as Snoke smiled, the wrinkles spreading across his cheeks, as deep as wounds.

 

Outside the terminal, beyond the steady stream of planes coming and going, the sky has grown dark. There is a storm in the forecast; it looks like they won’t be able to escape it after all. Hux swallows with a dry click. The man beside him empties his water bottle into a potted plant.

 

Thirty years, and Hux has risen like slow poison and collapsed like a cut throat, and now he is a dead man walking. Two years ago, he was given a project, Project Starkiller he called it, a cross-border merger the size of a small sun; he executed it, brilliantly, then watched as it cracked and began to implode beneath the focused beam of European Commission regulators. It’s a different regulatory environment now, of course, but Starkiller is beyond saving, and its gravity is inescapable.

 

His continued employment is not a gesture of mercy. Snoke keeps him on to kick him. Every flight is an exercise in humiliation:  the Travel Department loses his bookings, places him on bizarre connections, jams him into middle seats on strange, heretofore unheard-of budget airlines. At some point Snoke will give up the pretence and simply start trotting Hux out in chains, a cautionary tale for the bright-eyed trainees.

 

Faced with such hostility, some people would have left by now, found new work, gone back to school for art, begun again. But Hux is tied on the end of a string. He doesn’t know how to pick himself back up. The ground is a shell beneath his feet, every step forward tenuous, fractured; as long as he doesn’t look at it too closely, he thinks it might hold.

 

He hands his passport to the gate agent and waits while she looks him over with a glazed stare. Very little has changed in the time since his photo was taken, but Hux wonders all the same whether anyone else is able to see what he can sense:  the cracks beginning to spider across the façade.

 

The rain dribbles down in stops and spurts; it catches Hux, briefly, on the forehead as he steps between the gate bridge and the aircraft. He grimaces at the flight attendant who reaches for his boarding pass, swears under his breath at the man who tries to force an oversized piece of luggage into an overhead bin.

 

At last, he takes his seat by the window, shoves the SGS backpack deep under the seat in front, and tears his blanket free from its plastic wrapper, tucking it securely around his legs; over the blanket, he fastens his seatbelt. He pulls it tight, tight enough to bruise, tight enough to hold him together against the endless rabbit-jumping of his heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hux rolls into London proper fifteen hours later, suitcase trailing him like a droid. It’s raining here, too, in thin, cold, silver lines:  needles shooting straight through his overcoat and burrowing into his skin. Phasma has summoned him to a conference room, ostensibly to discuss the finer points of Malaysian corporations law, but really she just wants to pump him for information. News travels fast:  faster, at least, than Armitage Hux, who spent twenty minutes composing himself in the toilets before joining the taxi queue.

 

Rain lashes the windows. Hux lays out his reservations. Kylo Ren is too junior, too inexperienced. Kylo Ren is a maniac.

 

“Hux, you jetlagged lummox,” Phasma says flatly. “It’s not the end of the world. Just shunt him off to the side. Give him a dead end. Invent a goose; send him on the chase. Ignore him. Starve him.”

 

She leans back against the whiteboard, arms folded, legs crossed at the ankle. There’s always something masklike about her expression, something uncanny about her posture:  nearly seven feet tall and every inch of her Snoke’s automaton, from the points of her steely stilettos to the shining cap of her chrome-coloured hair. They started together, in the same year, and while Hux has faded into a shadow, Phasma’s only gotten bigger and more metallic. She’s about to top off her recital with a dead-eyed wink and a murmured _Simples_ , a limping imitation of humanity that Hux, jetlagged and lummocky as he is, will not be able to bear. He cuts her off at the pass.

 

“Kylo Ren is a menace,” Hux says. “He destroys everything he touches. He has no finesse, no tact. His memoranda are so heavy-handed that he may as well be backhanding our clients with an iron gauntlet.”

 

“What’s wrong with that?” Phasma says, looking blank. “Subtlety doesn’t go over well in the boardroom. Or the bedroom,” she adds, bafflingly, terrifyingly. She doesn’t give Hux any time to absorb this declaration. “You’d love to be able to beat some of these idiots over the head with armoured facts until they sink in. Admit that, at least, Hux.”

 

“His facts are _wrong_ ,” Hux says.

 

“Well,” Phasma says, “you’ll just have to guide him. Take him under your wing.”

 

Coupled with her remarks about the goose, this is two too many bird metaphors, and, taken in conjunction with her comment about the _bedroom_ , too much altogether.

 

“If there’s a strategy here, I don’t see it,” Hux says. He stands, slips his phone into his pocket, jams a folder in the crook of his arm. Meeting adjourned. The mouth of the conference room yawns behind Phasma’s broad shoulders. Five strides will carry him to the door, to the wide corridor beyond leads to the bank of elevators, to silence. Phasma will fall in beside him, like clockwork, but she’ll be quiet:  for whatever reason, she hates to talk and walk, preferring instead to impart her staggering bits of wisdom at parade rest. The elevators will divide them, returning Phasma to her practice floor and Hux to his. His head aches with fatigue.

 

“‘Treason never doth prosper,’” Phasma quotes, leaden. “Are you questioning the judgment of our Supreme Leader?”

 

Then she smiles, baring bright wet teeth, perfectly white, perfectly even. If Hux looks closely, he’ll see himself reflected in them, bite-sized. He tightens his grip on the folder. Phasma straightens up and gestures for him to exit first, bowing ironically from the waist.

 

A paralegal leaps to attention as they emerge, offering a nervous smile which neither Hux nor Phasma acknowledges.

 

They’re an imposing sight, Hux knows:  he, Hux, immaculate in black, sharp-shouldered, and Phasma, all silver and white, her jaw set, arms swinging, shoes clicking, both of them tall as gods. Snoke’s Riesengarde, Hux has heard it murmured, from a trainee solicitor with a _penchant_ for European history.

 

_Add that other one, what’s his name, Kylo Ren, and you’ve really got the Potsdam Giants on your hands now._

 

A snigger. _And who the hell are the Potsdam Giants, a tribute band?_

_And who the hell is Kylo Ren?_

 

They were standing around with champagne flutes, Hux remembers:  a ring of youthful faces at some firm-sponsored gala. The amateur historian sits on the twenty-eighth storey now, ruining her eyes with hour upon hour of document review, dreaming, perhaps, of Frederick and absolutism, or absolution. The sniggerer failed his qualifying examination by one point and was summarily booted, per firm policy. Booted, unregretted, and forgotten, all while Snoke was bending every rule to bring Kylo Ren on board and keep him. 

 

As he should have. Kylo Ren, grandson of the founder of Vader Capital, a genius, a man idolised by investors across America; Kylo Ren, scion of the Skywalker family, hedge fund royalty, only son and heir apparent of Leia bloody Organa, Vader’s daughter and the wealthiest woman in Chicago—whatever the reason he’d set his sights across the Atlantic, they were all clamouring to have him, every firm in London, lusting after his pedigree, his contacts, his potential.

 

They had no idea what he was really like.

 

Hux snarls under his breath. Phasma’s stride falters almost imperceptibly, and she raises her eyebrows at him, though, of course, she doesn’t utter a sound.

 

They reach the elevator bank, having parted a group of junior solicitors like the Red Sea, and Hux summons his escape pod with a press of a touchscreen. Phasma’s elevator arrives first. She steps neatly inside and turns on her heel, looking ready to offer a salute.

 

Instead, unexpectedly, she has something else to say.

 

“There’s method to Snoke’s madness, you know. _Method_ ,” she repeats, pointing squarely at Hux’s chest while he goggles at her, “and—”

 

 

 

 

 _Madness_ , Hux thinks, looking into Kylo Ren’s eyes.

 

Black pits in a bone-white setting. An angular jaw, clenched; a bitten lower lip; a storm cloud of black hair. He doesn’t know exactly how old Ren is, but he looks petulant and childish right now, cheekbones flaring with high colour, moments away from stamping his foot. He’s barrelled in before Hux has even had the chance to hang up his coat, filling up the room and staring at Hux with near animal intensity, as though he’s trying to read Hux’s mind, predict Hux’s movements down to the smallest twitch and creak. He hasn’t bothered with a tie, and the arms of his suit jacket are spiralled with strange creases all the way to the shoulders. Hux’s mouth twists at the sight of him.

 

“You’ve been ignoring my emails,” Ren says. His voice seems to come from deep within him, issuing from a wellspring of some dark power. His accent is brash, American, cornfed Midwestern, horrible and grating in Hux’s ears. Through the sliver of space between Ren’s huge body and the wall, barely visible in the corridor, Mitaka shrugs at Hux, his face pinched with irritation.

 

He’s surprised to see Mitaka, actually; surprised Snoke has let him keep his lieutenant. His subordinates have been dwindling, have been moved to other matters one by one. Paze, Stynnix, Edrison Peavey:  they slide past him in corridors with downcast gazes now. Don’t look at the pariah. Starkiller’s killer, who brought off his murder through carelessness and sheer bad luck. So be careful, then, you just be careful:  bad luck is catching.

 

“Sorry, sir,” Mitaka says, in biting tones; for now, he is cheerfully immune to bad luck. “I told him you were thirty-two thousand feet over the Crimea, but—”

 

“So there’s this fun little invention called Gogo in-flight wifi, jackass,” Ren tells him. He delivers the insult without heat, but Mitaka chokes to a stop all the same and goggles at Hux, aghast.

 

“Coffee, Dopheld,” Hux says, and Mitaka shrugs again and walks away. Hux shuts the door, taking the moment to compose his features. _And who the hell is Kylo Ren?_ Then he turns, leans against the door, and spreads his arms. “So, Ren,” he says. “Welcome to the team.”

 

Ren looks around insolently. The room is large but windowless, walls barren, looking more like a file storage room than an office. Boxes are stacked in the corner, papers spilling from them. There are no personal photographs, no notes jotted down on memo pads in looping human handwriting, and certainly no plants; there is nothing organic here, and at this stage of the evening, wearied by his travels, with grit building painfully in his eyes and throat, Hux is not certain he qualifies as a living thing either. Ren certainly doesn’t. He’s a blight, a shade. A demon.

 

“Cool,” Ren says, interrupting this apocalyptic train of thought. “Anyway, you should really check your email. If we’re going to work together.”

 

Invent a goose, Phasma said. Hux wants to invent a monster and feed Ren to it, piece by piece.

 

“Were you frightened?” he sneers. “An entire day without marching orders. Left out in the cold. Oh, no, Ren,” he says, “not another word. I’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

 

“I could bring you a coffee,” Ren says, slow and unperturbed, “next time. Instead of Mitaka. Just ask me.”

 

 _What on earth_ , Hux wants to say.

 

“What I want you to bring me is a full write-up on the Takodana direct investments,” Hux says. Not a goose:  a hydra. It should keep Ren away for a few days; a week, even, if he’s lucky. “Percentages, stake changes, directors. Credit downgrades if there are any. And we’re not working together. You’re working for me.”

 

“You said team,” Ren says. “Earlier.”

 

“Then I misspoke,” Hux says. “You can tell Snoke if you find it unbearable.”

 

Finally, Ren reacts:  the black eyes narrow. “I know what you’re doing,” he says.  

 

“Well done,” Hux says. “No prizes awarded, though.” He steps back and opens the door. Just a sliver. “Now get out.”

 

Ren has to force his way past. His arm brushes Hux’s chest with a rough scrape of fabric; the sensation sends a shiver up his spine. The light in the corridor is fading as Ren moves down it, shadowy. Hux swings the door wide and hangs his coat from the hook. When Mitaka returns with his coffee, he finds Hux at his desk, typing busily at a memorandum.

 

“Leave it there,” Hux says, and Mitaka sets it at the edge of the desk and backs from the room.

 

The worst Mitaka has ever done with Hux’s coffee is hold it too reverently. Ren would probably spit in it, or sip from it, digging his teeth into the rim.

 

 _Or poison it_ , Hux thinks. He feels poisoned already, the glowing red threads of it spreading through his body from the point of contact, from that single touch of Ren’s sleeve against his shirtfront.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He goes home long enough to bathe, to procure a change of clothes, and to scrape a razor over his chin. There is nothing in the refrigerator, and he stands haloed in the soft yellow light emanating forth over the empty shelves for a moment, staring dumbly, bare feet cooling on the tile.

 

What must he look like, he thinks. A soft and dozy university student, towel ’round his neck, lithe as ever, hair hardly thinning; the last ten years have scarcely touched him. Or perhaps they have:  perhaps the years have clawed his body, perhaps anyone looking in on him now, nude on the kitchen tile with his cock hanging limp between his legs and his hair dripping down his forehead, would see a man careering toward middle age:  stooped and skinny, skin beginning to freckle and line like crumpled linen after shock doses of tropical sun.

 

Yes:  what does he look like, and what does Ren see? Certainly nothing that would warrant the way he looks at Hux, with an intensity bordering on derangement.

 

He doesn’t like to be naked, even in the security of his own space; it makes him feel small and stretched, like the shadow of a branch in the thin air of winter, utterly bare and exposed, almost brittle.

 

Ren, on the other hand, moves about the office with a physicality that implies he barely notices the clothes on his body. Ren, Hux thinks, Ren naked at work, Ren crawling along the carpets on his hands and knees.

 

Perish the thought; banish it. Close the door and bolt it behind. Dress yourself with care. Admire the waterfall silk of your fine blue tie; frown at the way the jagged edge of your fingernail snags across its surface.

 

He trims his fingernail. Girds himself and exits.

 

Outside, the rain has thinned into a chill mist, wet and white, from which dark-clothed figures suddenly appear, bobbing forward like characters out of a Victorian drama. Hux joins them as they lurch toward the glass doors of the SGS tower, umbrellas folded tightly under their arms. Ren is not among them:  Ren the Ripper, Hux thinks, out there in the fog. Or peacefully asleep, his brow clear, his white face gone smooth and slack, while visions of wholly owned subsidiaries dance in his head.

 

The cafeteria is in uproar as Hux enters it, blearily seeking a double espresso. Silver flashes before his eyes and in the next moment Phasma is forcing him down into a seat, bellowing at him, “I can’t fucking believe this! Can you?”

 

He gets the story out of her like a blast from a fire hose, in one great body-pulping torrent. One of her juniors, whom Hux has known only by his ID number, has resigned.

 

“ _Defected_ ,” Phasma spits at him. “Without any notice at all. Well, damn it, Hux, react a little, why don’t you? He was one of yours, wasn’t he? In the beginning.”

 

In the beginning, in the days when he could do no wrong, when he and Phasma had their pick of each new class and trained them up like little soldiers. Badge number 2187, Finn, surname long forgotten. Hux pictures him now:  quiet, a little sullen, not particularly good at his job. Phasma felt there was potential, felt she could bring him in line, beat him into shape. Evidently she’s failed. Sourness radiates from her.

 

“American, wasn’t he?” Hux says, thinking of Ren, thinking of hammers, of forges. Sparks bursting from metal hewed in darkness.

 

Phasma stares at him. “All these flights have scrambled your brains,” she says. “He was from bloody Peckham.”

 

“I see,” Hux says.

 

“Christ,” Phasma mutters. “Well, drink up. I’m off to deal with the fallout.”

 

“Fallout?” Hux says, frowning. “Over a junior associate? Surely not.”

 

They drop like flies, the juniors, unlamented and easily replaced. The ones who go discover themselves to be unsuited to the pace of work, to the demands of the job, the demands of Snoke. Yet so far Ren has proven steady. He should be dislodged. Hux should dislodge him.

 

“I vouched for him,” Phasma says. Hux isn’t too lost in his own thoughts to notice how she hesitates, how she winds her long fingers together and kneads at her own hands before speaking. “Told Snoke we should give him another chance. So he couldn’t pull the trigger on the Jakku deal—so what? It’s not the end of the world. It’s not a fatal flaw. He just needs a little retraining, I said, so give him another go. I was never more eloquent. Never. Hand on my heart and all. And see how he’s repaid me, the bastard.” She’s shaking her head. “I was wrong about him. I couldn’t have been more wrong about him. Well, well. Just you pray for me, then.” She leaps up, seven feet of silver.

 

The Jakku deal, Hux thinks, draining his cup to its sandy dregs as Phasma blurs out of the cafeteria. They’d staffed Ren on that one, over Hux’s objections. So badge number 2187 had found the iron gauntlet unbearable too, had he? Hux wonders where he’s gone. To another firm, perhaps, however determined Phasma may be to destroy his career. Either he’s landed on his feet, or he, like Hux, is still falling.

 

 

 

 

 _You remember Kylo Ren._ Of course he remembers, though the memory is dim, shot through with fluorescent panic.

 

Night time over the Atlantic. A plane cabin, dry air; an ache in his throat. A dream of Brendol Huxley, the big block of a face contorting with rage as he shouts.

The plane pitches, startling him from an uneasy sleep; Brendol’s last cry fades into the droning of the engines. For a moment he thinks they are in freefall, then, with a lurch, they even out again, until another blast buffets them and Hux’s stomach flips and his seat rumbles beneath him. He clasps his hands together very tightly in his lap, one folded over the other, digging the nails into his flesh, as though the plane is held between his palms in miniature, like a voodoo doll, as though he can squeeze it into stillness. But no:  he doesn’t want stillness; stillness means the engines shuddering to a stop, means—

 

“Take it easy,” Kylo Ren murmurs to him.

 

Humiliation upon humiliation. It’s bad enough that Snoke has chosen Ren’s strategy over his in the Jakku matter—and strategy is too kind a word—but now they’re seated together on the same transatlantic flight, and Ren can see him, _has_ seen him, sweating and anxious, his breath fluttering in and out of him like a ragged wind-tossed flag. He has the window; he’s trapped. Ren’s bulk bars the way.

 

Another passenger slumbers in the seat across the aisle, black hair rumpled beneath a sleeping mask, oblivious to the heaving and yawing of the plane. Hux envies her. He contemplates feigning sleep, too, but Ren has clearly sensed the tension in his body.

 

“Hux,” he says.

 

Hux frowns. “It’s nothing,” he says.

 

“Sure,” Ren says. “Hux. You’re shaking.”

 

“I’m not—the plane is—the plane,” Hux mutters, disjointed, and he opens his eyes to peer out the window, to look upon the clouds that are causing his suffering, but there is nothing out there to greet him but night over the Atlantic, and the rhythmic green flash of the lights on the wing. Ren’s light is reflected across the window, too, and the dark swell of his shoulder, and a pale slice of jaw. His lips move.

 

“It’s just a little chop,” Ren’s mouth says. “Be over before you know it.”

 

“Yes,” Hux says, willing the conversation to end, pushing his palms together now to trap both the plane and Ren between them and muffle them into nothing. 

 

It doesn’t work. The airplane shudders, and Hux breathes in sharply, and Ren starts to speak again, in a low ponderous murmur:  the voice of a hypnotist.

 

“Listen, these things don’t just fall out of the sky,” he says. “Even if the engines quit. Both of them. We’d just keep gliding. For a little while, anyway.”

 

“How do you know?” Hux bites out.

 

Silence, and then:  “My dad was a pilot.”

 

“Bollocks.”

 

“It’s true,” Ren says, sounding as though he doesn’t want to believe it himself either. “A damn good one, I was told. A flyboy.” Hux says nothing, and Ren continues, “You know, there’s an app for tracking turbulence, I think it’s called Turbcast.”

 

Bad enough that Ren has seen him damp and shaking at the gate, his hands trembling all over his attaché as he looked at the rain sheeting down over LaGuardia and wondered if they’d even make it off the ground. Bad enough that Ren has seen him like this, queasy and hyperventilating in his seat; worse still that he isn’t gloating, that he’s decided to be _kind_.

 

“Excuse me,” Hux says, unclipping his seatbelt, “excuse me—”

 

Ren doesn’t stand immediately; he just looks up at Hux, shadowed, headphones trailing from his ears like strawberry laces, while Hux’s knees bash against his warm firm thighs, and then he unfolds himself just enough for Hux to wedge by, arse to pelvis, leg against leg. Ren’s hand hovers by his hip before falling away. He all but clambers over Ren in his desire to escape. His legs are jellied, and he stumbles briefly in the aisle, turning the wrong way into economy, beginning to gasp, the plane twisting and jolting under his feet, but miracle of miracles, there is one unoccupied lavatory, and he leaps inside it and bolts it shut and crouches to the floor, sticky as it is with unknown and suspect substances. Now let them go down, he thinks, and let it be quick, let it erase from him the memory of Ren’s eyes in the darkness.

 

 

 

 

The lavatory smells of antiseptic and apple soap. Hux folds over his knees and breathes; he extends one arm up and grips the edge of the sink with his hand, squeezing hard. In his memory of this moment he is still wearing a watch, and peeping from beneath the sharp edge of his cuff, the watch’s green night glow announces that there are still four hours of this, of being bumped and jostled and of fearing for his life. Brendol Huxley would laugh himself hoarse if he knew, and kick him, too, perhaps, a good one in the ribs, while he was down. But there is no room for the ghost of Brendol Huxley in this cramped space, packed as it is with the sourness of Hux’s fear and the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide as he breathes out and out and out.

 

 _For fuck’s sake get a hold of yourself_ , he thinks.

 

There is a knock at the lavatory door, a muffled rap.

 

“Occupied,” Hux barks. _Read the bloody sign_.

 

“Hux,” Ren says, and his voice, though faint and sinking beneath the hum of the engines, seems to pierce Hux through the abdomen.

 

Hux stands; mechanically, he straightens his tie. Finally, he exhales, slides the bolt open, and pulls back the door, which folds like an accordion; the yellow light of the lavatory shines momentarily into the corridor, onto Ren’s pale face, before winking out.

 

“There are three other perfectly serviceable lavatories aboard this—”

 

Ren’s hand is huge and warm on his chest; it connects with his body twice, solidly and rhythmically, as though Ren intends to restart a stopped heart, and with a gasp Hux staggers backward one step and then another into the darkened lavatory, until the backs of his knees hit the toilet and he crumples down on the lid, a pathetic bundle. Ren steps inside and slides the door shut behind him, locking it without even looking. The light comes on again as he does, fluorescent and unforgiving, turning his eyes into dark hollows, draining the blood from his bitten lips. His other hand is still on Hux’s chest, half-lifted, the fingers five hovering points of white-hot contact, while Hux stares up at him, stunned.

 

“What—”

 

Ren moves forward, edging between his knees, and Hux’s legs spread to accommodate him, the sides of his trousers rubbing up against the lavatory walls with a silky murmur. Ren shuffles in closer, and Hux’s shoes lift from the ground, toes skimming tile.

 

He smells like cedarwood and smoke:  delicious. Hux wants to press his cheek to Ren’s chest, between the hanging open lapels of his suit jacket, and breathe in and in and in.

 

“Have you lost your mind, Ren?” he says icily. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Get out!”

 

Ren looks at him, his expression somehow mournful, almost lost in thought. “Figured I’d come distract you,” he says. “Show a little initiative. You know.”

 

“No, I don’t know,” Hux snaps. His breath, slowed momentarily by shock, is beginning to quicken again. The bouncing light is throwing shadows on Ren’s cheeks:  a flutter, a swoop of the eyelids, and Hux starts to feel like he’s floating, weightless in some sort of freefall. Meanwhile, Ren’s body is generating its own gravity, drawing Hux to him piece by rebellious piece. “Get off.”

 

“I’d like to,” Ren says. “And you would, too,” he continues, while Hux gapes at him, pop-eyed. “I know you would,” he says. “I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

 

“This is highly inappropriate,” Hux says. “I’ll be speaking to Human Resources,” he says. “Mark my words, Ren,” he says, hoarse.

 

Ren kneels.

 

“What,” Hux says, gulping, “what are you doing?”

 

Now the dark head is bent before him, the broad shoulders bowed as if in obeisance, and Hux’s mouth, already dry, begins to feel exceedingly parched. Ren’s hands are on his legs now, at the crease of hip and thigh, not quite squeezing.

 

“ _What_ ,” Hux tries again.

 

Ren’s gaze flicks up at him, black and insolent, but he’s biting his lip, Hux sees; he’s biting his lip and he probably doesn’t even realise.

 

He experiences the fraying of his willpower as an almost physical sensation, a prickling down his thighs as the muscles coil, tensing to jump.

 

Ren’s body shifts under its clothes, but even before his head lifts all the way, Hux is on him, reaching out to grasp him practically by the ears and hauling him forward, compressing his nose against Ren’s cheek, sinking his teeth into Ren’s lower lip and licking at it next, running his tongue over the soft warm expanse. Ren breathes out hard through his nostrils, the air puffing between them; his hands tighten on Hux’s thighs momentarily before sliding upward, slipping under Hux’s suit jacket and coming to rest along his sides, already clammy with sweat.

 

Ren’s lips trail away from Hux’s as he climbs up into Hux’s lap, straddling him. Ren’s hair hangs down around their faces, curtain-like; Hux pulls at it, vicious, and is rewarded by the sudden plunge of Ren’s tongue into his mouth as Ren plants his hands on either side of Hux’s head and surges against him, flattening him against the back wall of the lavatory.

 

Hux pants under him, with a fistful of arse in each hand. He digs his fingers in. Ren jerks, rubs against him with a clumsy movement of his hips, hard against his stomach. The plane is shuddering, but it’s nothing compared to the looping, swirling feeling in the cage of Hux’s ribs:  his heart has taken flight.

 

“Fuck,” Ren mutters, “Oh fuck, Jesus fucking fuck.” He draws away just enough to rub his fingers through the slick of saliva at the corner of Hux’s mouth, his thumb tugging at Hux’s lip; Hux nips at it, tasting salt. A memory:  the blue corner of a laughably small packet of complimentary peanuts vanishing under Ren’s fist. The fists are on his shoulders now, braced, and Hux’s eyes are fixed on Ren’s face, on the red flush of his skin. Ren swears and sits back again, almost gingerly, and he groans, once, sharp, at the feeling of Hux beneath him. They rock together, working the press of Hux’s cock up between his buttocks, as far as the seat of his trousers will allow.

 

Ren makes quick work of his belt, undoing his buckle one-handed and yanking down his zip in the same violent movement. Black pants, of course; Hux nearly rolls his eyes, but he is transfixed. Ren’s hand hovers over the bulge of his cock, almost coy, and then he palms himself roughly through the material, hissing through his teeth. His stare burns over Hux’s mouth and chest, as he begins to pant and to move, meeting each stroke with a jerk of his hips, until Hux can’t stand it anymore and reaches between them to grab his wrist. Ren’s gaze flies upward, so dark. Hux can feel the tendons taut within his grasp. He swallows and croaks out, “Impatient, aren’t we.”

 

Ren scowls at him, curls his hand away. When it comes away it is damp.

 

“We can take it slow some other time,” Ren says. “My fucking ass is gonna fall asleep.”

 

Hux rubs against him in one long slow thrust and watches with satisfaction as Ren bites his lip again. “Will it, now? Tragic.”

 

“Dick,” Ren says.

 

Hux snorts. “You’re making this too easy,” he says, rolling his hips.

 

Ren rides the movement, panting. “That’s right,” he says, and suddenly his arms are around Hux’s neck, and he’s leaning in, murmuring, “ ’m real easy.”

 

 _Bollocks_ , Hux thinks, kissing him. Twelve hours ago, Ren was mouthing off to a pair of associates about some minor point of law in the Jakku deal, banging at the conference table, looking ready to eviscerate the poor bastards. _Nothing could be further from the truth._ He licks the inside of Ren’s cheek and slides his hands under the elastic of Ren’s pants, taking firm hold of what lies beneath, relishing the tremor that runs up Ren’s body. _You arse, Ren_ , he thinks, turning his head to bite at Ren’s throat:  _You petulant fucking child._

 

“Hux,” Ren gasps, lips pressed to his ear. His voice is ragged. “Fuck,” he groans, and arches, reaching back to fumble at Hux’s cock; he misses.

 

“Stand up,” Hux says, while Ren paws at him, “stand up, fucking Christ, Ren, are you listening to me?”

 

Ren heaves himself upright and stumbles back a pace, Hux’s hand on his chest:  Hux’s turn to push, now. He manoeuvres Ren up against the lavatory wall, legs comically spread and braced against the dipping and jumping of the plane, belt and trousers flopping about his knees. Ren’s pants are rucked down his hips, balls tight, his cock flushed and leaking. Hux refrains from whistling at the sight of it:  rather impressive, all told. He undoes his own buckle, and then Ren’s impatient hands are upon him, stripping him down, gripping him with a burning touch. Hux takes full advantage of Ren’s widened awkward stance, bearing down on him and forcing Ren to tilt his head up:  _How do you like it now, Ren,_ he thinks, _being loomed over?_

 

Ren doesn’t seem to mind at all, infuriatingly. He chases Hux’s tongue, sloppy, rubbing his hand over the wet head of Hux’s cock before taking them both into his huge palm and beginning to stroke, moaning into Hux’s mouth. His other hand kneads Hux’s hipbone.

 

“God,” Ren says. “When we get back—”

 

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but Hux can read his thoughts as clearly as though they’re being projected into his brain, a reel of obscenity:  hotel beds, black sheets, arms and legs entwined, a writhing tangle of pathetic white flesh. _Hands on his chest_ , Hux’s mind helpfully supplies:  Kylo Ren trembling minutely as he lowers himself, thighs tensed, stomach trembling, sinking down inch by fantastic inch onto—

 

“Let’s focus on the matter at hand, shall we, Ren,” Hux says. He brushes Ren’s hand aside and closes his fingers around Ren’s cock.

 

Ren groans, eyes sliding shut. “Sure,” he says, “sure, whatever you want, you’re the boss.”

 

The fantasies of a moment ago blast out of his head. The hotel bed evaporates. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s heard all day, all week. He rewrites his memory of Ren shouting across the conference table:  now there is only silence, and Ren’s black eyes staring into his a split second before Ren’s gaze drops down, before the slight dip of Ren’s head as he concedes defeat.

 

“Say that again,” Hux says.

 

Ren looks as though he wants to smirk, but he can’t quite catch his breath. His eyes flicker back and forth between Hux and Hux’s pumping hand, and he gulps and gasps over the wet squelching noise of it, hips rocking.

 

“Whatever you want,” he says. “I’ll do whatever—whatever—you— _ah, fuck_ — _yeah_ —”

 

Ren slumps back, panting, still coming in weak little spurts into Hux’s fist, dribbling over his knuckles. “Jesus Christ,” he says. He shudders as Hux swipes his dirty palm up the front of his shirt, digging his fingertips in around the buttons to clean under his nails.

 

Hux is breathing hard, too, windblown, as though he’s just come sprinting in from the pelting rain. He wants to come so badly he thinks he’ll burst if he doesn’t. He swallows.

 

Before he can speak, Ren lifts him, actually lifts him, onto the sink—into it, rather, since space is limited. He trails his fingers along the insides of Hux’s thighs, and then, while Hux is still trying to make sense of this new configuration and the less than pleasant sensation of the cold metal faucet now being jammed into his kidneys, Ren pins his legs down and sucks the head of Hux’s cock into his mouth. 

 

The heel of Hux’s right foot impacts the cabinet; his head hits the mirror, and he grits his teeth against the groan building in his throat.

 

“Ren,” he says, while Ren swirls his tongue noisily around him, “Ren, _Ren_ —”

 

His head hits the mirror again as he shudders, hips jumping. Ren groans low in his throat and pulls off, and then he simply rolls Hux aside with his shoulder, squashing him into the paper towel dispenser, to spit into the sink. His hand is still on Hux’s cock, possessive, as though he doesn’t want to let go.

 

Hux pulls him up by the hair. “Clever boy,” he says, and Ren looks at him with wild eyes, water and saliva shining at the corners of his mouth.

 

“Hux,” he says—

 

A chime sounds. Hux twitches.

 

“Relax,” Ren says. He swipes at his chin. “It’s just the seatbelt sign. The all clear.”

 

Hux notices it slowly, the renewed steadiness of the plane. But just beneath the calm, there is a plummeting feeling, a leaping and fluttering in his gut not unlike the stomach-clenching drop of initial descent. And they’ve certainly been for a tumble:  Ren’s hair is tangled; his lips are swollen, smeared; a horrid soggy patch is spreading across the front of his shirt. Hux doesn’t even want to think about what he must look like, collar crushed, hair standing up like flaming thatch, prick wet and well and thoroughly sucked. He can still feel the heat of Ren’s mouth around him.

 

He grabs blindly at the paper towels and thrusts a crumpled handful at Ren.

 

“Clean yourself up,” he says, and he drags his pants and trousers up in one swoop and fastens them, runs his hands through the sink, runs a hand through his hair, and runs away.

 

 

 

 

Ren doesn’t chase after him. Perhaps he’s tidying himself up as ordered. By the time he returns, Hux has strapped himself back into his seat, yanked his blanket all the way up to his chin and pulled his sleeping mask down over his eyes. He breathes softly, rhythmically. He feels Ren’s hand on his arm, still hot, still damp, but he doesn’t respond; not even a muscle twitch. Eventually the hand lifts.

 

Hux dozes. Three hours later, they land without incident at Heathrow and file off the plane in silence. Ren is delayed at customs. Hux returns to his flat.

 

 

 

 

So, yes, he remembers Kylo Ren, in painfully intimate detail:  the scrape of his hands, callused, the heat of his body. The _hardness_ of it, of his stomach and arms, shifting beneath the polyester scratch of his terrible shirt. He’s spent more than a year trying to forget, trying to avoid him, building the wall between his matters and Ren’s, and for a time he was successful; Snoke left him to Starkiller. Now Starkiller has failed, and Hux’s star is falling, and he’s been given no choice but to tether himself to Ren and drag him in from the cold. And save himself from exile, perhaps, in the dragging.

 

He should let go of the rope. He should cut the tether. He should. He should.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Return to the present. Shake off the sodium bloat of beef stroganoff served in a foil boat, the vitreous membranes of your eyes dried into raisins by recirculated air. The memory of fingers gripping painfully tight around your hipbone, of Kylo Ren gasping in your ear, of the skin of his prick like velvet in your hand.

 

It’s been a week since his return to London. He ignores his jetlag until it whimpers away; he’s been ignoring Ren, too, and wishes Ren would do the same. Instead, Ren writes memo after memo and lobs them into Hux’s inbox two and three at a time, like handfuls of pebbles dashed against a window pane. Hux does not come out to play. He makes his edits and forwards them on to the relevant parties, and when Ren comes to confront him about some butchered passage or excised discussion, he finds Hux barricaded in his office, taking an important call or about to initiate one. He thinks Ren will wait, arms folded, seething in the hallway just beyond the door, or ambush him in the break room, but Ren never does.

 

Today, Ren has sent only one particularly egregious write-up. Perhaps the well is beginning to run dry. Hux hopes so. He prints a copy to show to Mitaka.

 

“Pap,” Mitaka murmurs. “Absolute and utter.” He turns the paper over and sighs. “Is there time to revise it?” He looks up in sudden apprehension. “Don’t tell me you want _me_ to—”

 

“Have someone check his citations,” Hux says. “That Securities and Exchange Commission litigation release from nineteen-fucking-forty-three, have someone make sure there wasn’t an appeal.” He’s not even sure how Ren managed to unearth _that_ particular artefact, but he imagines it involved a series of escalating emails that culminated in Ren more or less choking the life out of some poor fool in the research centre, flooding their inbox with follow-ups until an answer was given:  some answer, any answer, anything to make Ren go away.

 

“But you’re going to send it off?” Mitaka asks. “As it is? Just like this?”

 

“Of course not,” Hux says. “It’s atrocious. If the client doesn’t have me drawn and quartered, Snoke will.”

 

“Then,” Mitaka says.

 

“I’ll make the changes. And when Ren comes by ranting and railing about how we’re always suppressing his style and curtailing his genius,” Hux says, “tell him I’ve left for the evening.”

 

“I value my life,” Mitaka says.

 

“I value the reputation of Sloane Gallius Snoke,” Hux replies. He retrieves the paper from the table, rolls it up, and uses it to tap Mitaka on the shoulders:  left, right. An anointing. “I’ll say a few words at your funeral.”

 

He shouldn’t joke about it. Peera Maso moved down the hall last week to join the capital markets practice, and she’s taken up whirling around the floor clockwise and anticlockwise like a dismayed Roomba, doing everything in her power to avoid eye contact. If Mitaka goes, there will be no one left.

 

Phasma stops by at dusk, to gawk, he assumes, at the state of things.

 

“You’re not the only one being isolated, you know,” she tells him, standing incredibly still in his doorway with the corridor lights shining on her hair.

 

Hux raises his eyebrows at her. She entered his floor accompanied—no, flanked—by two associates, both silent and unsmiling and impressively arrayed in starched white shirts and tweedy grey trousers. If Phasma thinks _that_ is isolation—

 

“Not me, you twit,” she says, motioning her troops onward with an impatient jerk of the arm. “ _Kylo Ren_. He used to have a whole _banner_ of sullen-faced idiots following him around. Well, they’ve gone, in case you hadn’t noticed. One moment:  here. Next moment:  vanished into the ether.”

 

Hux does remember them, dressed smartly in black, a flock of first and second years following Ren silently through the office. Before Jakku, there were at least six.

 

“Now he’s alone,” Phasma says.

 

He’s always thought of Ren alone, though, hulking and still, looking at Hux across the blackness of some cavernous space, Ren and Ren alone, lit by a shaft of watery grey light. Those knights of his were no more than shadows on the wall.

 

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Hux says, frowning. “You’re breaking quarantine. Failure is catching, Phasma. Best not to come within sneezing range.”

 

“Oh, Armitage, how I’ve missed your sneering commentary,” Phasma says. She gestures at the mound of papers on his desk:  the scrambled results of Ren’s Takodana subsidiary research, delivered far sooner than Hux had expected or wanted. “Document retrieval. We forgot our decontamination suits.”

 

“How careless of you,” Hux says.

 

“Try not to cough on my kiddos,” Phasma says, in parting. She’s rounded the corner by the time Hux realises there’s still no real reason for her to be here. Her kiddos are more than capable of pulling banker boxes out of storage by themselves.

 

He exits his office, curious, in time to see them striding away, each carrying a box. Phasma is holding a laptop bag. They call an elevator and enter it, lockstep. Hux returns to his desk.

 

At nine, the office lights go off. The deep industrial humming of the heating and cooling systems shuts off, too, and Hux is drenched in darkness and silence. He stands and stretches, listening to the crackle that works its way down his spine. He remembers that he has half a curry left in the breakroom refrigerator and goes to retrieve it. The lights are motion-activated; they follow him down the hall, flicking on one by one, as he makes his progress. Once upon a time, the entire floor would have remained bright and noisy, his team powering ahead to meet the next Starkiller deadline. Tonight, the offices are empty. Mitaka goes home every night at seven, and there are no others left in his orbit.

 

The skyline ensnares him before he’s made it ten steps down the hall. He returns to the office that was his just a year ago, one wall entirely glass, and looks out. London shines like a star field spread beneath his feet, every light a jewel.

 

A telephone rings, blaring through the silence, and Hux swings away from the window, frowning.

 

It’s Moden Canady’s line:  he can see the red dot flashing at the old secretarial station, just on the other side of the glass, unwavering, a laser sight. A string of numbers flashes across the screen in a strange configuration. American. _Project Dreadnought_ , Hux thinks. He hurries from his old office and grabs for the receiver.

 

“Hello?” he says, into dead air.

 

The voice on the other end is loud and confident, despite the faulty connection, the accent jarring; if Hux were pressed, he would hazard New York. “Hi, is this Moden Canady?”

 

“This is Armitage Hux,” Hux says. “May I ask who—”

 

“Oh, is Mister Canady out? What did you say your name was? Hugs? Is this the general line? The, uh, general—general—Hugs? Hello?”

 

“Hux,” Hux says. “It’s _Hux_.”

 

“Oh, yeah, right, okay. Hux. Is Mister Canady there? Can you get him? I’ll hold. Thanks.”

 

“ _Mister_ Canady has gone home for the evening,” Hux says. “May I ask—”

 

“Oh, great, cool,” the voice says. “Yeah, this is Poe Dameron, from, uh, from Above the Law. You heard of us? No? Check us out sometime. Listen, uh, I’m doing a story about magic circle firms over in the U.K. I’m kind of tracking stuff down, following a couple of leads. We got a tip the other day about some unusual billing practices, uh, over there on your side of the pond, and I was wondering if I could get a comment about—”

 

“I’ll have to refer you to our media and publications department,” Hux says. He rattles off the number and extension. “No comment.”

 

Dameron persists. “Sure, but don’t you wanna give your side of the story before the, um, before the actual story breaks? I mean, before I break it. Blow this whole thing wide open. Drop the bomb. You get me? So how about it?”

 

“No comment,” Hux grinds out, “thank you,” and hangs up.

 

He doesn’t have much time to puzzle over the call. Elsewhere on the floor, someone is shouting and shouting, voice rising into a screaming pitch. Hux’s frown deepens. He turns.

 

At the opposite end of the hall, an open doorway glows with soft yellow light. This is the conference room where Ren has established himself; favoured as he is, he keeps no permanent office in London. The raised voices are, of course, coming from this room.

 

Hux approaches. Ren must be video-chatting again; it’s all he does other than type furiously away at the battered keyboard of his custom-build laptop, the screen of which glows red instead of blue. A woman calls him from time to time, at strange hours. A long-distance girlfriend, Hux believes, named Rey. Hux has seen the spelling jotted across a sticky note in Ren’s hideous scrawl:  _REY 11PM._ She lives in America and speaks, perplexingly, in a low, clear Oxbridge accent. Perhaps Ren met her here, in London, though how he’s managed to keep her remains a mystery. The distance must help, though surely things must be beginning to fray.

 

He remembers an argument, Ren’s voice rising in the stillness. _No, I can’t come back next month._

 

Rey’s reply is an indistinct murmur.

 

It goads Ren into fury. _Okay. Okay. Okay. If this isn’t a good time to talk, Rey, when’s a good time? When’s a good fucking time?_

 

 _Your boyfriend’s had my cock in his mouth, Rey-in-America_ , Hux thinks. _What do you make of that?_

 

He passes by Finn’s old office. The door is open. A few treatises remain, casting long shadows on the otherwise empty shelves, but it looks as though office services have finally cleared it out. There’s a big wheelie bin wedged in the corner, filled to the brim with documents for the shredder.

 

Another memory surfaces:  Finn, not so dearly departed, just two weeks in at SGS, amusing his fellow trainees with a pitch-perfect American accent. The sun was shining brightly outside. He had coffee in his hand and Mitaka at his elbow.

 

 _New York_ , Finn says, eliciting giggles, _sa-ni-ta-tion_ , _I’ve got a bad feeling about this_.

 

 

 

 

Following the noise, Hux looks into the conference room and finds Ren laid out across the sofa at the far end, books and papers piled on the floor beside him, his laptop open on his chest and emitting a diabolic red light. He’s fast asleep, one arm dangling off the sofa. The yelling is coming from Ren’s laptop, where a science fiction film is playing at full blast. The protagonists have run into some trouble, judging from the sound of things. There is a gnashing mechanical screech. The screaming increases.

 

“Ren,” Hux says. He raps at the door and says, louder, “Ren, this is unacceptable. You’re on the clock. Wake up.”

 

Ren doesn’t stir. Hux crosses the room, dodging binders in the half-dark, and presses the lid of Ren’s laptop down. The sound cuts off abruptly. The clamshell is warm; Hux’s hand hovers over it, suddenly uncertain. Beneath the laptop, he can feel the rise and fall of Ren’s chest.

 

He removes it in a single swift motion, setting it on the floor, and then just as smoothly and decisively clamps his hands over Ren’s eyes and bends to bite the bewildered, sleep-dazed mumble from his lips.

 

“Hux,” Ren murmurs.

 

Hux startles, the fantasy tearing away in shreds, and looks down at his hand, still floating above the closed case of Ren’s laptop. A gleam in the dark above it:  Ren is looking at him.

 

“Hux,” Ren repeats, quiet.

 

“You can’t sleep here,” Hux says. _Tapetum lucidum_ , he thinks. It’s only the reflection of the light of London, but Ren’s eyes look uncanny, predatorial, glistering green. His mouth is dry. He swallows. “This isn’t a common room at university. This is—”

 

“Hey,” Ren says.

 

His hand skims Hux’s sleeve. His lips move, but whatever he says next is inaudible. His eyes have already begun to close. The light of London slides across the chalk white of his face like a new and sudden scar.

 

“Go home,” Hux says, stepping away. “It’s late.”

 

Ren doesn’t respond.

 

He pauses in the doorway, looking back at the body recumbent in sleep, knees bunched, feet dangling over the armrest. Fantastic thoughts assail him, of the conference room door locked, shutters deployed, of Ren’s legs still dangling, knees still bunched, and his trousers in a heap ’round his ankles. Hux will step on them—his mind supplies the glossy lines of fluorescents bouncing off the toecap of a black shoe—to keep Ren pinned and awkward. No pants, of course; Ren will have left those at home on Hux’s orders. He’ll be rocking against the armrest with quavering little gasps:  uncharacteristic, perhaps, but this is the state to which Hux will have reduced him. And a solemn _adieu_ to Snoke’s carefully chosen upholstery, stained forevermore.

 

No, no Snoke either, Hux thinks, banishing the ghostly image of his shrivelled employer. No Snoke and no pants:  there is only Ren here, in this hideously ostentatious conference room, with his pale muscled arse tilted appealingly toward Hux and the ceiling.

 

Quickly, Hux overwrites the vision, substituting an unlocked door, ajar, threatening to swing wide open, with a murmur of voices beyond, and movement:  associates hurrying to a meeting, Peera Maso swearing at a printer.

 

“You’ll have to be quiet, Ren,” he says, “or they’ll hear you, and they’ll come to see what all the fuss is about, and then they’ll _see_ you.” His brain helpfully strips Ren of his shirt, and the broad white shoulders, dotted with black moles, ripple under the heat of his gaze. What are Ren’s hands doing in this moment? Are they bunched beneath his body, pinned between the cushions and his stomach? Is he reaching desperately back towards his leaking cock, jamming the knuckles of his hands against the armrest while he tries to rub himself off with the movement of his hips alone? Hux solves the problem by wrenching them against the small of Ren’s back. In his mind his own hand is just large enough to hold Ren’s wrists there, and, more importantly, Ren lets him.

 

With his other hand, he will give Ren’s hair a tug, relishing Ren’s low and helpless groan. “But you’d _like_ that, _wouldn’t_ you—”

 

His phone buzzes in his pocket, recalling him to reality. The room is dark and quiet, and Ren lies statue-still under his eyes. The scene is ludicrous. Anyone who happened by now would see Hux standing over Ren’s supine body and assume he was contemplating murder. And then, perhaps, they would notice his erection.

 

He takes a moment to steady himself in the darkness, trying to wipe his mind clean, before returning to his office.

 

To hell with his supper; his appetites have shifted. He makes a note to mention the American caller to Canady, who will bluster and rage and call Hux a bloody idiot, and then he gathers his things and hurries off into the gloomy June night. The air is uncomfortably damp; the short walk along the Thames, dodging laughing couples walking arm in arm, does nothing to improve his mood. He runs a bath as soon as he returns to his flat, intending to wash the stickiness from his skin and the tight, humming feeling of irritation.

 

Instead, he stays too long in the water and wanks as it slowly drains away, fucking the pruney circle of his right fist, imagining all the while that it’s Kylo Ren he’s plunging his cock into:  on the sofa, at his desk, right here in the bath, the water sloshing around their bodies, too tall to fit safely or comfortably. He’ll bend Ren over the edge of the tub and take him from behind, he thinks, splashing madly as he jerks himself faster. He’ll push himself in all the way to the hilt. The awkwardness of the angle will knock the breath right out of Ren; he’ll try to cry out and all he’ll be able to manage is a whimper, and Hux will laugh at him and fuck him until they’re both gasping.

 

He thinks of Ren’s black hair tumbling over his eyes, Ren’s plush mouth gulping for breath, slick and red. He comes so hard he hits his head on the rim of the tub and lies back, dazed, to stare at the moisture clinging to the ceiling. The water clouds. Eddies and whirlpools form around his heaving body, then drain away.

 

Ren’s voice echoes in his mind:  _Hux_.

 

 

 

 

By the time Hux remembers to raise the issue of Dameron, Canady has taken an offer at another firm, erasing his presence at Sloane Gallius Snoke so thoroughly it’s as though he’s disintegrated.

 

No matter. The research centre is crawling the web daily on Hux’s behalf, training their luminous spider-eyes on Dameron’s every movement. The profile they’ve compiled is not flattering:  a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School whose curriculum vitae is comprised mostly of slapdash listicles elevated into Joycean texts by even sloppier copyediting. Dameron’s Twitter profile retweets an even balance of law professors and NASCAR enthusiasts, replete with memes and flashing gifs of Pokemon, of all things. _We are unable to capture gif files_ , an emissary of the research centre informs him dourly, as though Hux wanted them in the first place. No matter, Hux repeats to himself, grinding his teeth:  if Dameron ever stops linking Esquire articles about top ten leather jackets this season and makes good on his threat to publish, Hux will be the first to know.

 

Ren holds his degree from the University of Chicago, too, Hux is galled to realise he remembers; he may even have known Dameron, moved in the same circles. He ought to make inquiries, ought to raise Dameron in conversation and see what Ren lets slip.

 

Instead, he avoids the subject, avoids Ren. In July, he takes the Eurostar to Paris; he flies to Hong Kong and, later, Beijing. One of Snoke’s little errands. He is delighted, for once, to be sent far, far away.

 

He returns in August, jetlagged to the point of delirium. Ren’s work product has hardly improved in Hux’s absence; neither has his work ethic, but he doesn’t want to look at Ren, let alone speak to him, for fear that Ren will be able to see the images piling up in his mind, that Hux will open his mouth and obscene demands will fall out like dark gems. Here an emerald, here a ruby, and then, a fragment of obsidian, scratching the roof of his mouth as it tumbles onto his tongue:  _come here, Ren, come here at once and lock the door behind you._

 

Snoke remains in Paris, sending directives from afar. Sometimes he calls in, and Hux and Ren stand in a darkened conference room before the projector, taking orders from Snoke’s withered, disembodied head in a hideous parody of the Wizard of Oz. Snoke dismisses Hux first every time, and he exits smoothly, head level, biting the inside of his cheek, so relieved to find the verbal throttling at an end that he can almost ignore the slide of Ren’s gaze over his back, the black eyes pinioning him, as he goes.

 

“Chicago,” Ren says, catching up to him at the elevator bank. “We’re going to Chicago. Next week.”

 

“Are we,” Hux says, even though he’s just finished thumbing through the notification from Travel. A direct flight at a reasonable hour, and business class, too:  how swish. So Snoke has given Dreadnought to Ren after all, despite the chaotic end of Jakku, despite Ren’s habitual inability to write a client email in full sentences.

 

The elevator arrives.

 

“I’m the lead on this one,” Ren says. Hux glances at him, sees Ren watching him closely for a reaction. He smoulders faintly under Hux’s cool stare, like a volcano gone dormant, but only just.

 

“Naturally,” Hux agrees, scanning the news. The elevator proclaims that sixty percent of Britons are satisfied with their careers. The next screen exhorts readers to plan for retirement. Ren is still staring at him. Another four seconds of this and he’ll be able to walk away and barricade himself in his office.

 

“That’s it?” Ren says. “That’s all you’re gonna say?”

 

The doors open.

 

“There’s nothing more to say,” Hux says. His shoes click on the polished concrete flooring. Ren dogs him, his feet utterly silent; his boots have knobbly black soles like winter tyres. “I’m sure you’ll do admirably.”

 

Ren looks at him suspiciously. “You’re taking this well,” he says. “You’re being _nice_ about it. You’re never nice. About anything.”

Hux raises his eyebrows. “No?” he says, silkily. “Do you want me to be cruel?”

 

Ren says nothing. Hux sees his throat working as he swallows.

 

Hux wants to smile. He wants to run a finger down Ren’s cheek, watch it redden, slip between Ren’s parted lips and hook his fingertip under an incisor. He fishes his badge from his pocket instead. He says, blank-faced, “I’m at your disposal.”

 

 

 

 

His last week in London passes in relative tranquillity as Ren vanishes inside a maelstrom of emails, a rain-darkened cliffside overwhelmed by starlings, or a starship swarmed by enemy fighters. This last analogy has Hux putting his head in his hands and rubbing at the deepening crease between his brows. He’s spent too long in Ren’s orbit, seen far too many clips of the absurdly campy sci-fi movies Ren watches when he’s meant to be working.

 

Phasma has heard about the lead switch, the demotion in all but name. She comes to see him, says, “So you set him three impossible tasks, and he finished them with flying colours, did he? I heard he vanquished a hydra, significant subsidiaries and all. Careful, _Huxley_ , they’ll have you mopping up the lavatories next.”

 

Hux gives her two fingers, and she grins.

 

“Not long now,” she says. “He’s bound to do something unforgivably idiotic soon. He’ll say something, insult someone. He’s playing with fire.”

 

“He’s playing with Americans,” Hux says.

 

“Exactly,” Phasma says, bafflingly, and makes her exit. When Hux visits Finn’s office to see what else she’s taken, he finds it picked clean.

 

 

 

 

It’s Sunday night before he realises it, and the jet bridge is vibrating beneath his feet. Blink, click, gone:  _next slide._ One moment he’s in his flat, folding shirts into his suitcase; in the next, he and Ren are boarding together.

 

It’s a clear, calm evening, and everything has gone smoothly:  light traffic, proper queues, and no delays, no messages about mechanical issues. The gate attendants are neither exhausted nor gratingly energetic. They scan Hux’s printed boarding pass with cool and professional smiles.

 

Ren, of course, has downloaded the airline app. He slides his phone onto the scanner. Flash, beep. Ren lists to one side as he tries to cram his passport into his backpack.

The bag is faded black canvas and looks as though it has carried Ren all the way through his primary school days and past university, straps fraying, zips missing. Hux, frowning at it, realises he’s waiting at the mouth of the jet bridge, waiting for Ren to _join_ him. He turns swiftly away and hurries on.

Ren reaches him soon enough, thundering down toward him with huge strides. “Hux, wait. Hey.”

Hux doesn’t turn. Ren’s hand ghosts over the small of his back.

“You gonna be okay?” Ren says, showing him the turbulence forecast on his phone. There are storms projected across the Midwest.

Hux ignores him.

Ren’s fingers brush his wrist. “Well, just let me know if you wanna, you know, if you need,” Ren says, low, while Hux freezes, appalled, unable to believe the words being mumbled out of Ren’s mouth; then Ren falls mercifully silent and pushes his phone at the flight attendant, who points him down the left aisle.

The attendant turns to Hux, smiling.

“I’m with,” Hux says and trails off, mouth snapping shut:  the words are poison, and he holds them on his tongue, unsure of whether to spit or swallow. He ignores the solicitous gesture of the attendant’s hand toward his boarding pass and speeds toward his row.

 

Ren is standing like a beacon in the aisle, eyebrows raised. Hux frowns and busies himself with the overhead compartment.

 

Their seats are plush indeed, with glassy black touch screen panels and ample legroom. Hux hands his suit jacket to an attendant and accepts a glass of wine in return, and then he stretches out, trying not to look too pleased. Ren, earbuds jammed in so deeply that Hux imagines they’ve penetrated his brain, taps out a drum solo on his thighs and stares blankly ahead. His shirt swells with slow breaths; he may as well be asleep.

 

When the plane accelerates, Hux turns away from the window. The nose angles itself upward, and all of a sudden they’re aloft, with a faint shudder that seems to shake every joint and panel of the aircraft. Hux closes his eyes.

 

The flight itself is uneventful; restful, even. Hux dozes. When he awakens, they’re just crossing onto dry land, curving over the Atlantic. Ren is no longer in his seat. Hux wonders momentarily if he is meant to go after him. He dismisses the thought and opens up his laptop to draft a client alert.

 

Ren comes back eventually, and Hux keeps his gaze trained on his screen, shoulders rigid. There seems to be something sheepish about the way Ren folds himself back into his seat. Hux nearly speaks to him then, but Ren is already hammering the earbuds back into his skull. He does not refasten his seatbelt.

 

Hux frowns. He closes the alert draft and applies himself to his emails. Half of them are from Ren, sent without subject lines.

 

The last was sent five minutes ago. He deletes them all in one fell swoop, unread.

 

The attendants serve a late meal. Hux declines; his stomach is already roiling, despite the relative serenity of their progress. Ren eats slowly but methodically, catching the crumbs of his dinner roll with the pad of his index finger and swooping them into his mouth. Then he crushes his napkin in his enormous hands, wipes his palms a second time, revoltingly, on his trousers, and selects a science fiction film from the screen.

 

Hux drinks a second glass of wine. He watches the reflection of Ren’s dark head in his window, his almost dazed stare as a glittering action sequence in his film bursts across his irises in shards and speckles of red and violet light.

 

London is asleep now, or should be. Paris, too, but abruptly, a new message leaps into his inbox:  Snoke, demanding a status report. Ren may be leading this project, but Hux, it would seem, remains on the hook.

 

 _Bait_ , he thinks suddenly, and his guts writhe at the realisation, _I’m_ bait.

 

The illusion unravels. He isn’t here to supervise, or to mentor, or to act as a final check against Ren’s recklessness. There is no reason at all for his involvement in this project, in Dreadnought, which began in America, in the branch office from whence Ren emerged. He must only be here, on this flight, comfortably ensconced and agreeably tipsy, because Ren asked for him, asked and received him as a morsel from Snoke’s table, a present for Snoke’s pet.

 

The shade of Brendol Huxley laughs at him in the window, laughs uproariously. Humiliation floods him, a sticky sickly feeling in his gorge that he swallows back. _You’re nothing_ , he reminds Brendol; _I saw you buried, I saw you in your casket with your jaundiced eyes sunk deep into your skull, sixty years and nothing to show for it._

 

 _And?_ says Brendol’s ghost. _And you, my boy?_

 

The ghost follows him as he looks away, hovers in the reflection of the window on the screen of his in-flight entertainment system, superimposed above the flight tracker, above the swirling clouds.

_One flight away from whoring yourself out for promotion._

 

 _I’ll resign_ , Hux tells it. _I’ll resign the moment we touch down._

 

 _You’ll die at your desk_ , Brendol replies. _Like your father before you._ Hux feels the dead hand on his shoulder.

 

Beyond the veil of Brendol’s corpse grin, the skies are growing black, anvil clouds rising to envelop them. They are approaching Chicago. The plane begins to heave and yaw. Passengers are gasping with every sharp dip. The next lurch banishes Brendol to the ether, while Hux curls himself as tightly into his seat as he possibly can, pulling at his seatbelt until he’s certain he’s lost all circulation to his legs.

 

“Jesus Christ,” he hears Ren mutter, after another stomach-churning lurch. “You good, Hux? Scared?”

 

Hux glances at him. Ren’s pallor has taken on a greenish tinge:  so even Ren, pilot’s son Ren, is not immune from fear, or nausea, at the very least.

 

 _Pilot’s son Ren._ Perhaps Ren is haunted, as he is; perhaps Ren’s father follows him, as his does, from flight to flight.  

 

The air beyond the windows is dancing with lightning, which flashes red through Hux’s eyelids at regular intervals. There must be cyclones on the ground below. Hux imagines the funnels reaching up like the five fingers of a grasping, divine hand, wrapping around the plane and hurling it to the ground, where it will explode into a pile of mechanical detritus and violently amputated limbs.

 

“Hux?” Ren says.

 

Hux can’t speak. A second later, the plane drops. Hux’s body lifts from the seat and crashes back down. It happens so quickly he barely has time to swear, let alone draw the breath to scream, but other passengers are faster. In the cabin, tens of voices cry out in terror, then suddenly fall silent.

 

The engines roar; the plane boosts upward. The first officer makes a breathless announcement about an air pocket.   

 

“Hux,” Ren says, in an altogether different tone, and Hux looks down and finds himself gripping not the armrest but Ren’s thigh.

 

The muscles tense under his hand, firm and reassuring, as he applies steady pressure to them just above the knee. Ren is looking at him, his eyes lidded and dark, his lips parted. The sensation of falling immediately worsens, but Hux can’t seem to withdraw. Ren slips down in his seat at the next bump, long legs jutting forward past the divider. He lifts his right leg, pushing up onto his toes, pressing his knee into the air, pressing his thigh into Hux’s palm. The plane rocks. Hux digs his fingers into the divots on either side of Ren’s kneecap.

 

Ren is staring at him. The pattern of his breathing grows shallow and quick. What a pair they are, Hux thinks, hyperventilating in their seats for entirely different reasons. But he can’t let go.

 

Ren bites his lip.

 

Feeling scalded, Hux looks away. He wishes he could smirk, but his facial muscles are paralysed into a grimace of dismay. He concentrates on the heat radiating up into his hand from Ren’s body. His pulse is beating against his skin, thrumming in his fingertips; he wonders if Ren can feel it.

 

The first officer comes back on the Tannoy:  they are being diverted to Detroit.

 

 

 

 

An airport shuttle packed with other delayed travellers carries them to the hotel, a dingy structure shabbily erected in the Seventies, flaking apart in the early stages of decay. All the while, as they bump along a pothole-ridden single-lane road behind the airport and wait in an inordinately long and snaky queue, Ren is pressed up behind Hux, practically breathing down his neck, huddling closer than his own shadow.

 

“Are you a child?” Hux hisses, but Ren only looks at him, silent, and bites his fucking lip.

 

They reach the counter, where a bored-looking night clerk informs him of the wide selection of rooms, of the crumbling suites and mildew-furred swimming pool.

 

He feels the brush of Ren’s hand against his suit jacket, the touch of Ren’s fingertips to the side of his wrist, the heat of Ren at his back.

 

“One room is fine,” he tells the clerk, interrupting her mumbled caveat about the single bed, “perfectly adequate.” He half-turns and catches a glimpse of Ren’s face, naked with longing, and then he pivots back to the counter, thrusting his credit card blindly across its crackling plastic surface. He signs the offered receipt— _my hand_! he thinks, in a neon flash, as the pen wobbles and drags the tail of his X all the way down to the edge of the paper, _my hand, look at my hand, I might as well be drunk!_

 

She hands him two key cards. He passes these to Ren, barks, “Take these. Don’t lose them.”

Ren obeys, instantly and in silence. _Oh, fuck me_ , Hux thinks, _so that’s flipped your switch, has it? A little press on the leg?_

_Fuck me._

 

“Get my bag,” he says, voice reverberating in his chest.

 

Ren shoulders his backpack and his duffel and grabs Hux’s rolling case. He follows Hux through the lobby, stalking after him like a black cat. The elevator arrives, ancient, narrow, carpeted from floor to ceiling. Ren looks ready to pounce.

 

“ _Wait_ ,” Hux says, and he watches Ren shiver and ball up his fists. The size of those hands, Hux thinks; the size of _him_. The doors clang shut. They hum upwards.

 

Afterward, Hux will not remember the distance between the elevator doors and their room, how the silence descended upon them as soon as they emerged onto the fifth storey, their footsteps muffled into the horrid grey carpet, how Ren fumbled with one key card and then the second and swore and Hux stood beside him, his skin electric with anticipation, how they both seemed to sigh as the light went green at last and the room opened to them, and Ren all but kicked their luggage inside, leaning heavily on the door in a vain effort to get it to close faster. The room is dingy; it smells faintly of cigarettes; there is only one towel hanging over the bath and the window stares into a parking garage. He stores none of that to revisit later. The door shuts, and is bolted—by whom?—whose shaking hands?—and Hux turns.

 

“Get on your knees,” he says, and Ren gasps in relief and goes down like a marionette that has lost its strings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hux is hard already, of course, mortifyingly so, and Ren dives at him, rubs his face against him, panting with eagerness. He mouths at Hux through his trousers, all damp heat. Hux remembers the feeling of those lips stretched around him, the sight of Ren’s cheeks hollowing; he wants Ren’s mouth on him so badly he could shout.

 

“Patience,” he says, more to himself than anything, _bear up, man!_ but Ren groans.

 

“I wanna—”

 

“I know what you _wanna_ ,” Hux says. “Ask nicely.”

 

Ren glares at him. “Pretty please with a cherry on top,” he says.

 

Hux taps him on the cheek. Ren’s eyes widen; the red flush deepens. “Like you mean it.” He taps again, harder this time. “Go on.”

 

“ _Please_ ,” Ren says. And then, as though a dam has burst, he blurts, “Please, Hux, let me suck your cock.”

 

Hux swallows, and for a moment Ren seems to be smiling up at him, perhaps enjoying the effect he’s had. As Hux hesitates, though, Ren’s smile evaporates; he looks at Hux, stripped bare, and his eyes are dark and desperate.

 

“Let me,” he says, in a hoarse whisper, “please.”

 

Wordless, Hux undoes his zip. He gets his cock out and rubs the head of it along the seam of Ren’s lips, leaving a bitter trail. His skin is hot, but Ren’s lips are hotter, and hotter still is Ren’s mouth as it opens for him, and he plunges into it.

 

He can’t suppress a whimper at the heat and softness and the slide of Ren’s tongue against his frenulum, but the sound is mercifully lost in the noise Ren makes as Hux presses forward, a muffled groan that chokes off into wet silence. Hux feeds him his cock inch by inch until the head of his prick is rubbing at the ridge of Ren’s throat. Ren’s lips thin and tremble; he gags, minutely, the cords of his neck standing out, his face red, tears springing to his eyes. Hux draws out a fraction before sliding back in, watching Ren’s nostrils flare as he struggles to breathe, watching the flutter of his eyelids, feeling the back of Ren’s tongue tensing and twitching against the underside of his cock.

 

Ren pulls off, gasping. Bright sticky lines of saliva and precome stretch and break as he retreats, glowing against his chin in the half-light. For a heartbeat Hux imagines that Ren has come to his senses, imagines being elbowed aside as Ren makes his escape down the hall and into grey-carpeted oblivion, but he notes the hazy, blown-out look in Ren’s eyes:  the scene is very much still on.

 

“Are you going to be a good boy?” Hux says. He reaches down, presses the backs of his knuckles to Ren’s burning lips.

_Lick? Or bite_ —

 

Bite.

 

“I’m not interested in being good,” Ren says, nipping him, and his voice is a wreck, five fathoms deep. Hux gulps, and Ren inhales. He puts one hand on Hux’s hip, pushing him into the door, and wraps the other hand around Hux’s shaft, squeezing tight, and with a grin all for himself, he leans forward and drags the head of Hux’s cock back into his mouth.

 

“Fuck,” Hux hisses, and Ren makes a soft moist sound of agreement.

 

Ren’s enthusiasm knows no bounds. He runs his tongue all over the head, poking at the slit, lapping along the edge of the crown, panting and slurping and breathing harshly through his nostrils. The hand on Hux’s hip slips down and into his trousers to cup and work his bollocks; the other pumps him like a piston. Ren’s palms are rough with calluses, and his saliva is drying on Hux’s skin; the friction is almost too much, but Hux clings to it—he needs it right now, that little bit of pain, to concentrate the mind and to keep embarrassment at bay. He’s on the verge of verb conjugations, of unappetizing visualisations; he’s about to thump to his knees, to _swoon_ , transfixed by the sight of the black head bobbing obscenely before him, the bowed shoulders, the half-lidded eyes, the relentless, unbelievable suction. Kylo Ren is a maniac; Kylo Ren is _wanton_ , he’s—

 

“Slut for it, aren’t you,” Hux gasps out. “Christ, look at you. Christ, Ren. Do you like it? Choking on my cock?”

 

Ren rocks back on his heels and makes a sharp noise as he finds his own prick. He falters, and Hux slides deeper into him, grabbing hanks of Ren’s hair to keep him there. Ren growls and gags and dribbles around the sudden stretch, growing sloppy as Hux fucks his mouth and Ren fucks his own fist.

 

“Just gagging for it,” Hux says, “you—oh—fuck, _fuck, Ren, your mouth_ —”

 

He nearly doubles over, seizing Ren’s head with both hands and thrusting home, shoving in as deep as he can go. Ren groans in his chest, low and frantic, and as Hux slumps back against the door, he sees Ren’s cheeks puffing with the effort not to retch.

 

Ren starts to pull away, eyes darting toward the sink in the darkened bathroom. Hux, shivering, winds Ren’s hair around his fingers and _yanks_.

 

“Swallow,” he says, holding Ren against him, even though every small movement of Ren’s mouth around his oversensitive prick is making him twitch and tremble, “I said _swallow_ , Ren.”

 

Ren’s throat works, tongue curling against the underside of Hux’s prick as he obeys.

 

“That’s it,” Hux says, winded. “That’s it.”

 

Ren’s eyes are watering, but his hand is pumping so fast over his own cock it’s almost a blur, palm sliding over the head again and again, balls tightening, bearing down, his entire body braced to come.

 

“Hux,” he gasps, slipping off again, hand flying, “oh, fuck, oh fuck yeah—”

 

He presses his face to Hux’s groin, _nuzzling_ him, rubbing his cheek against Hux’s softening prick—his forehead and his cheek and his eyelid and the sharp white point of one canine and his open panting mouth, wet and pink and smeared with pearly traces—

 

“Fuck,” Ren moans, and then he grits his teeth and comes across the top of Hux’s left shoe. He stays there, kneeling at Hux’s feet, rubbing his fingers over his cockhead, squeezing himself and shuddering. His cheeks are flushed with an unknown ratio of exertion and embarrassment, the colour spreading down his neck as he gulps for breath.

 

“Well done,” Hux says; unthinking, he crouches to kiss the upturned red face.

 

“Hux,” Ren sighs.

 

When he pulls away, he sees that Ren is grinning, hugely and messily, his black eyes glowing.

“What do you want?” Hux says, quiet, and he feels the shiver that runs through Ren’s body. He cups the narrow jaw. Ren leans into his touch, panting, eyes fluttering shut.

 

“God, Hux,” Ren says. “Fuck. Whatever. Anything. Everything. Touch me, touch me.”

 

The urge to tumble him again is overwhelming; the dim light from the window catches, unhelpfully, on the outline of the bed just beyond Ren’s shoulders. There’s a desk, too, and a swivel chair. _I’ll have him there_ , Hux thinks, _there, and there again, and once more in the bath_.

 

 _In the bath._ Bathrobes, room service, rose petals. Hux laughs, sharply, and presses his hand to his eyes, pushing until the images are dispelled by static.

 

“We have work to do,” he says.

 

Ren snorts. “Hell yeah, we do,” he says. He clambers to his feet and staggers deeper into the room, looking ridiculous:  hair sticking up, collar askew, one shirttail untucked and dangling and his cock half-hard and flopping out of his trousers. “Lights on?” he says, and when Hux doesn’t answer, he flips the switch and sits down on the bed, legs spread, already beginning to unbutton his shirt.

 

“What are you doing?” Hux says.

 

“Come here,” Ren says. “Come here and—” He trails off as he notices Hux tucking himself back into his pants, zipping up. “Holy shit, Hux, what are _you_ doing?”

 

“That’s enough, Ren,” Hux says. “We have an early flight tomorrow. Don’t lose focus.”

 

“Focus,” Ren repeats. “Are you kidding me?”

 

“It’s late,” Hux says. “You should review the deck before you go to sleep. I made some revisions to slides seven through nine.”

 

“You’re not _done_ , are you?” Ren says, gaping at him. “Jesus Christ, are you serious? They have pills for that.”

 

“But do they have an app for it?” Hux returns, nastily.

 

Ren is looking at him, the expression on his face approaching anguish. “God damn it, Hux, don’t you want to—”

 

 _Yes_ , Hux says, mutely, _god, yes_ ; the whole of his body is screaming for it, wants it so much he’s starting to feel ill.

 

“Tomorrow,” Hux says, in a rasp. As soon as the words have left him, he regrets them. A vision flashes before his eyes:  Ren, on his knees under the conference room table, looking up between Hux’s spread thighs, gripping them with his hands, kneading them through the fabric of Hux’s trousers, mouth slack, eyes hazy, already drooling for it. And client and client’s in-house counsel looking on in horror.

 

“Tomorrow,” he clarifies, “when everything is finished.”

 

 _When_ I _am finished—_

 

Ren looks at him for a long time in silence. His breathing is finally starting to settle. Eventually, he says, “Fine.”

 

Hux hurries into the bathroom to brush his teeth. When he re-emerges, Ren has changed into black sweatpants. He’s standing by the window, laptop on the sill, his broad naked back hunched as he swipes through his slides. His shoulders are flushed pink. Hux stands in the doorway, counting the moles.

 

 _I’ll resign_ , he thinks. _Twelve, thirteen, fourteen_. There’s one dead centre between Ren’s shoulder blades, a small speck like an ink stain. He comes close, presses his thumb to it.

 

A tremor runs between them.

 

“Hux,” Ren says, exhaling in a rush. Hux trails his fingers down from one point to the next, tracing a constellation. Ren slumps forward, muscles shifting and flexing, pushing his forehead into the glass. “Hux!”

 

“Enough,” Hux says, to the room at large, and he steps away.

The flight is at seven; it will get them into Chicago just in time. He sets an alarm for five-thirty.

 

He remembers, or dreams up, a distant summer afternoon. It’s two o’clock and all is well in the world as he climbs the stairs to heaven, to Snoke’s throne room. The glass surrounding him is in need of a washing; the light that comes through it is pure blue haze. He feels haloed, anointed. London is quiet, awash in sunshine. In the stillness, he hears Snoke’s voice, a persistent, plaintive, wasp-irritating buzz.

 

The buzzing ceases, suddenly, as though the fist of god has come plummeting through the blue and smashed the wasp, and, as he rounds the corner, he collides with the body that is flying down the corridor at top speed.

 

He stumbles. Kylo Ren reaches out and catches him by the arm.

 

Back in the hotel room, the bed dips as Ren sinks onto it. Hux opens his eyes.

 

Ren’s laptop is a glowing red square on the windowsill. The lights of the parking lot are still oozing in behind it, casting grey patches on the carpet. He feels the squeeze of Ren’s fingers on his forearm, the heat of Ren’s mouth at his ear, the hard press of Ren’s prick against his hip.

 

“Hux,” Ren says, low and insistent. His breath is damp, panting. He can’t lie still. _Rub._ All Hux has to do is reach behind—reach behind and take him in hand. “You said tomorrow. You mean that, right? You’re not lying? Tomorrow? Tomorrow, Hux?”

 

All he has to do—

 

“Yes,” Hux says.

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

When he wakes that morning, Starkiller’s post-mortem is in his inbox, accompanied by a press release from the shareholders of his erstwhile client announcing the commencement of a class action lawsuit. He flicks through the alert from the research centre with the limp dozing form of Ren laid out flat beside him on the bed, brooding even in sleep. There are claims of legal malpractice, of irreparable harm, of fraud. Playing with Americans indeed.

 

He would have welcomed an article from Dameron, a whole slew of articles, with their light gnat whirring, easily squashed, as a distraction. Instead, he has nothing but the spectre of his own failure to accompany him as he dresses himself in the grey gloom, black suit, dark tie, studiously ignoring the bright lights of his phone and laptop screens. It’s a funeral day, he thinks, for Starkiller and for Armitage Hux. He sits at the edge of the bed and waits for Ren to wake.

 

Ren doesn’t, and time is short, and Hux leans in—

 

_A brush of the lips on the earlobe, a whisper, just one little touch, twist your fingers through his hair and push his arms overhead, press his hands into the pillows, bite his chin, bite his lip, bite the irritating jumping pulse nestled at the juncture of jaw and throat—_

 

He raps his knuckles on the bedside table instead, says perfunctorily, “Ren, for Christ’s sake. We’ll miss our flight.”

 

Ren opens a lazy eye.

 

“So let’s miss it,” he says, yawning. “Let’s miss it.” He smiles, slow and curling. It takes hold in Hux’s heart like a worm, coiling between his lungs. Ren says, “It’s tomorrow, Hux. Tomorrow is here.”

 

“Dreadnought,” Hux reminds him. “Closing.”

 

Ren digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, laughs. “Are you going to fuck me if I close this fucking deal today, Hux?” Then his laughter fades, and his mouth compresses, and he claws at his own skin, pulls at his own hair. “Hux,” he says, and groans.

 

“Get up,” Hux says.

 

“You’re killing me,” Ren says, as he goes into the bathroom.

 

“Don’t tempt me,” Hux says, under his breath, and then he rubs his forehead and pushes his face into his hands. There is an afterimage behind his eyelids, a white space in the shape of Ren’s sleeping body; he’s looked at Ren too long, seared him into his retinas.

 

Ren re-emerges with a bang, adjusting his tie. He’s wearing a suit Hux hasn’t seen before, moulded to his form with gorgeous precision, Savile Row through and through, the material so dark it seems to eat the light. His shirt is crisp, glowing white, his tie a deep bloody crimson, falling down his body like a sabre cut.

 

Still fiddling with the knot, Ren glances up, sees Hux looking at the tie, at _him_ , and stiffens. Colour sings along the tops of his cheekbones. His throat works above his collar as he swallows and looks down, eyelashes sooty against his skin:  what a picture, what a picture, Hux thinks.

 

Ren lifts his gaze. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide.

 

“We don’t have to go,” he says, hoarse. “Fuck the deal, Hux."

 

 _Dangerous_ , Hux thinks. Kylo Ren is dangerous.

 

He doesn’t answer. He _can’t_ ; his voice will betray him. He simply turns to leave. After a moment, Ren follows.

 

 

 

 

Luggage collected, lights off, keys slipped across the counter to the same night clerk. She doesn’t spare them a second glance. The dawn air is damp; Hux sucks it down.

 

They leap forward in time in a rattling sequence:  shuttle, automatic doors, tile, bright lights, security. The plastic rumble of the wheels of Hux’s suitcase, bumping over grooves in the linoleum. At last they come to their gate in a dark corner of the airport. Ren veers off, and Hux doesn’t follow him. He drops gratefully into a chair along the wall.

 

The gate agent has yet to arrive. The sun begins to rise over Detroit, glossy against unwashed windows.

 

Ren reappears, silent, and Hux grunts at the coffee that slides suddenly into his hand. Ren sits down beside him, spreads his legs, tilts his head back, and goes to sleep.

 

Hux sips and winces. Ren has purchased for him a cup of ditch water, into which a shard of coffee bean might have been dropped several weeks prior. He takes a determined gulp, scalding his mouth until all taste is lost, and thumbs through his notifications. The newest email in his inbox is from Mitaka, announcing his departure, fond farewells, always reachable at gmail-dot-com. A sensible decision. After all, this isn’t war; he was never Hux’s lieutenant, not really.

 

A memory bubbles up through the depths. Only a week ago, Mitaka paused at Hux’s office on the way to his own, just to say good morning, it seemed. He was flustered, flushed, still wearing his laptop bag. Ready to flee at a moment’s notice. 

 

“How long will you be?” Mitaka said.

 

“Worried about me, are you, Dopheld?” Hux said.

 

“You’ll be in enemy territory,” Mitaka said. “With, with.” He trailed to a stop, unsure how to reference Ren, who had no official title, no status, no place in the London hierarchy.

 

“Have you heard from Canady?” Hux asked, offhandedly.

 

“Canady?” Mitaka said, in withering tones that indicated Canady was dead to him. But his eyes flickered away as Hux glanced at him. “No.”

 

 _Perhaps I should worry about_ you _, Dopheld_ , Hux thought, then; _perhaps when I come back, I’ll find you gone_.

 

“So Mitaka finally decided to fuck off, huh,” Ren says in his ear. His hair tickles Hux’s neck.

 

Hux twitches, sloshing coffee over the back of his hand. “Hell,” he mutters, and “ _Ren_!” as Ren bends his head to lick Hux’s knuckles clean. “People are—”

 

“No one’s here,” Ren says. “People? What people?” He smiles into Hux’s skin. “No one wants to go to Chicago today.” The tip of his nose presses into Hux’s wrist, cold, a vivid contrast to the burning heat of his tongue as it swipes between his fingers, tracing the tendons down the back of his hand.

 

“Maniac,” Hux whispers. The morning sun shines on his hand as he wrenches it away.

 

Ren jiggles his leg up and down until boarding. He moves with such force that the whole row of seats seems to shake, that the earth itself seems to shake, fracturing beneath Hux. _Ah_ , he thinks, recognising the sensation, recognising that his tenuous ground will hold no longer, _this is the end._

 

 

 

 

Hux, trapped on a terrace beside the stinking Chicago River while they raise the bascule bridges on Franklin and Wells, glowers into the green depths while a parade of small ships, their sails rainbow bright with banners of pennant flags, bunting for giants, dart down the water, heading out to sea, or more properly, to the great lake. It’s barely a kilometre away, brilliantly, aggressively blue:  he saw it just that morning through the window of their east-facing conference room, a square stamp of teal between sand-coloured buildings and the darkness of Ren’s shoulder.

 

His calls and emails to Phasma have gone unanswered; it’s as though she’s fallen into a pit, never to be seen or heard from again.

 

The silence from Snoke, meanwhile, is beyond ominous:  it is the silence of the crowd, the intake of breath, before the executioner lets loose his axe. Knelt on the scaffold, blindfolded, with only your ears to guide you, you cease to breathe in the sudden hush; you hope he’ll strike true, to kill and not maim.

 

Ren’s self-assurance, his arrogance, has hardly been shaken today. Hux suspects he hasn’t even looked at his phone. Not, of course, that the news of Starkiller’s demise would mean anything to him. The only hint, if there is one at all, is his apparent loss of appetite:  Hux has grown accustomed to the sight of Ren scarfing down whatever bag of stale, complimentary biscuit, pretzel, or nut the airlines have to offer them, his and Hux’s as well, but today he declines, shaking his head.

 

Nerves, perhaps. Ren is, after all, determined to close this deal, this deal on which so much depends.

 

Nerves, hell. You’d never be able to tell. An hour before, as Ren clicked through their presentation, he spoke so slowly, so haltingly, that Hux almost wanted to finish his sentences for him, to give him what he wanted, just to end the pain, and then he recognised the interrogator’s technique for what it was, realised this was what Ren was after all along.

 

Ren stumbled only once, when asked about divestitures that might have to be made to appease European regulators. Hux cut smoothly in, murmured about probabilities. They discussed antitrust termination fee insurance, closing procedures, formalities, the lake, and Hux looked again at the square bit of teal through the window, growing brighter and bluer by the minute. In looking he caught the edge of Ren’s smile and felt it go through him like lightning.

 

Now, an hour later, as Hux sweats in a superheated metal chair by the water, the sky is just as poisonously blue, the air thunderously hot, nearly sweltering. There will be storms again tonight.

 

Hux runs a finger along his collar, unsticking it from his skin. He thinks longingly of London, of its cooler evenings, though an email from Mitaka the night before had mentioned that the mercury was rising, temperatures creeping toward thirty degrees centigrade.

 

A likeness of the goddess Diana floats aloft in the humid air, standing atop a building in green-cast bronze, her nimble foot extended, torch outstretched.

 

He’s thinking of Diana because of Rey, tiny in his mind by virtue of sheer physical distance, so far removed from him that she’s like a toy ballerina in a music box, a figment, a sculptor’s half-formed dream. And yet they are closer than they have ever come before to meeting. He remembers glancing at the scribbles at the corner of Ren’s legal pad:  where he was meant to be taking notes, he was writing, over and over, _REY 2PM_ , _REY_ , _REY_ , filling the page with her name. She’ll be hurrying across a bridge, beginning to run; she’s late for their late appointment. Sweat will bead in the little groove above her lip, the way it is beginning to gather at Hux’s, and at his nape, and under his arms, gather and trickle. Journeys end in lovers’ meeting. Now, Hux thinks, right now, at this moment, she’s throwing her arms round Ren’s neck.

 

_Embrace? Or throttle—_

 

Perhaps Ren will grind himself against her too.

 

The Wells Street bridge has lowered without his noticing; a train rumbles over it. The trains run aboveground here, adding their noise to the general tumult. The hotel workers downtown are striking:  employees march up and down on the other side of the water, drumming and chanting. A building is under construction nearby, oddly wasp-waisted. Cranes tower over the river. A helicopter buzzes in the distance.

 

He finds himself looking in the direction of the lake. The asphalt and concrete are shimmering; the roofs of cars are shimmering; the whole of this world dazzles him, with its flatness and its sparkle. He expects to see Ren through the blur of heat, the mirage coalescing into man, light into darkness. But there’s nothing on the corner but tourists and a busker and a homeless man with a cat in his lap, all of them being baked into the ground.

 

The Dreadnought deal closes while Hux is sitting there, swilling coffee, frowning eastward.

 

 

 

 

The hours ooze by. Burnt, dazed, Hux retreats indoors. He splashes water on his reddened face in the café restroom, relieves himself, and orders a cappuccino. Ren does not contact him. Preoccupied, no doubt. He imagines the skin of the woman Rey is London-cool through and through; he imagines Ren melting into her, with a long, gusting sigh.

 

Finally, Snoke writes, summoning him to Paris.

 

 _Come at once_ , the executioner’s email says. _On the first available flight._

 

 _How long?_ Hux replies.

 

_Until this business is sorted._

 

 _And Ren?_ Hux asks, but Snoke does not answer.

 

It’s midnight in Paris. He imagines Snoke sunk in darkness, scrolling through his emails with one long, horrible, wizened finger.

 

 _You’ll die at your desk_ , the ghost of Brendol reminds him. Hux slides his chair back with a grinding squeal of metal on metal. He wipes his upper lip, replaces the cup on its saucer, and opens the door of the café to the blazing summer sunshine. The ghost of Brendol burns away.

 

 

 

 

In between stoplights, Hux composes his email to the client, declining the invitation to a celebratory dinner and apologising for the sudden change in plans.

 

His phone flashes. Ren, he thinks, flinging back a furious typo-riddled reply, but no:  Travel have booked him for an 7:50 p.m. flight on Icelandair. He’ll have just enough time to shower, change into a clean suit, and pack. Out of a desire to inconvenience someone other than himself for once, he calls up room service and requests a platter of sandwiches. He calls them back half a minute later to demand a case of champagne.

 

He slams the phone back down on its receiver and stands contemplating the empty room:  the carpet, red, white, and atrocious; the view, spectacular; the bed, pristine.

 

 _Paris_ , he thinks. _Paris._

 

Whatever awaits him in Europe, be it summary execution or an extended stay in the Tower at the Supreme Leader’s pleasure, he likely won’t see Ren again. And how nice it will be, he thinks, how good, to be free, at last:  free from every desire.

 

The knock comes far sooner than expected.

 

“Enter,” he snaps, surprised at his own irritation. His reverie is broken. The lock beeps, feebly, and the noise of fumbling continues. The knock comes again, a booming reverberation, as though they’re trying to break the bloody door down.

 

Swearing, Hux crosses the room and throws the door open.

 

It isn’t room service. It’s Ren, wild-eyed, hair curling around his face and throat in damp tendrils. He’s breathing hard. He’s lost his suit jacket somewhere along the way; his shirt is plastered to his body, gone nearly transparent with sweat, his tie flopped back over one shoulder. A plastic shopping bag dangles from one hand. As he meets Hux’s eyes, he throws the bag to the ground.

 

“Ren,” Hux says. He isn’t the least bit surprised about _this_ , about the sound of his own voice, clear and quiet, like a stone being dropped into deep black water. Sinking fast.

 

Ren doesn’t bother with the door this time; it’s still swinging slowly, inexorably shut, the hallway gaping beyond, as Ren pushes inside, puts his hot, sweating hands on Hux’s face, and noses at him, so desperate to make contact that his mouth slides first over Hux’s cheek, and then his chin as Hux tilts his head up, gasping, to meet him halfway.

 

They stagger backwards. Ren is tearing at him, fingers prying at his tie, his collar, his buttons, scrabbling upward to slide through his hair, and down again to massage at his shoulders. Hux is half out of his suit, one sleeve flapping. The bed hits his calves. He falls back, and Ren clambers atop him, drawing his mouth away long enough for both of them to inhale.

 

Hux grabs him by the back of the belt. Ren is already rocking against his leg in small, frantic movements, panting, hands braced on either side of Hux’s head. The fabric of Ren’s fine black trousers makes a velvet purring noise against the span of Hux’s thigh. He’s hard.

 

“You were just gonna go,” he hisses. “You were just—without another fucking word. Back to London. You fucking asshole, you lying fucking sack of shit.”

 

“Paris,” Hux says, trying to put his mouth on every part of Ren that he can reach while Ren surges over him:  throat, shoulders, nipples, small and stiff through the sodden material of Ren’s shirt. “To Paris. Do you ever read your emails from start to finish?” He can feel the heat rising off Ren’s body, steaming off him. He must have run all the way. Is this a grand romantic gesture? Are there, horror of horrors, wilting roses in the plastic bag now lying discarded by the door? He runs his tongue roughly down Ren’s chest, bumping over buttons, tasting sweat. “Ren—you could have hailed a taxi.”

 

Ren ignores this. He sits back, trousers stretching across the swell of his cock, and yanks at his own tie until the knot loosens; he tosses it to the side. It lands near Hux’s head, as red as the lurid paper lining the walls of Snoke’s Paris office. Then Ren sweeps it away.

 

“Paris,” he says. “To Snoke. Snoke, the great and powerful.”

 

His heart thuds. “It’s not as if I have any choice.”

 

“You have every choice,” Ren says. “Every goddamn choice.” He kisses Hux sloppily, knocking their teeth together, sucking at Hux’s lower lip and groping at his prick until he moans.

 

“Ren—”

 

Ren pulls away, tilting his head, as if he’s admiring his handiwork. Slowly, deliberately, he says, “Don’t go. Stay here. With me.”

 

Hux reaches for him. Ren comes back willingly, shivering as Hux licks at the corner of his mouth. He winds his fingers through Ren’s hair, all the way to the wet roots, and tugs; Ren jolts against him and groans.

 

“You’ll have to go back eventually, too, you know,” Hux informs him. “Dreadnought is done.”

 

“I’m quitting,” Ren says, “just like Mitaka. He had the right idea.”

 

“How unlike you to admit it.”

 

Ren grins.

 

Hux sniffs. “If I had known all it would take to dislodge you was my own complete and total capitulation—”

 

The grin widens. “What,” Ren says. “Would you have given in sooner?”

 

 _Maybe_ , Hux thinks, looking at him. _Maybe, and how sweet it would have been, Ren, how sweet, to fuck you under the auspices of the illustrious Sloane Gallius Snoke, make it so you couldn’t look at any room, at any surface, without remembering how it felt to have my cock up you._

 

“I can read your fucking mind,” Ren says, shuddering. “I can see exactly what you’re thinking, so do it, fucking do it already. God, Hux.”

 

He’s already jamming his hands down the back of Ren’s trousers, onto— _Christ_ —his bare arse, palming him, squeezing. Sweat has collected in the little dip at the base of his spine. Hux slides his fingers through it, spreads Ren a little, traces teasingly around his rim. 

 

“Fuck!” Ren says, bucking against him. “Fuck.”

 

“Patience,” Hux murmurs. “Patience, Ren. Let me take my time with you.” It sounds almost tender, and he winces, but Ren is otherwise occupied, trying to push as much of himself as he can against Hux’s roving fingers.

 

“You’ll miss your flight,” Ren gasps. The front of his trousers is damp, and not with sweat.

 

Hux nods, serene. “I’ll miss my flight.”

 

The edge of his thumb snags against Ren suddenly, dry. He feels, rather than hears, the quick inhalation that Ren takes, feels his stomach muscles tensing as he braces himself for pain.

 

Hux withdraws. He’d love to see Ren shed real tears, but not like this. He runs through the hotel room inventory in his mind. There must be lotion in here somewhere, but where is it, and will it be enough?

 

Ren looks at him, eyes dark, and bites out, “Lube. In the bag. Over there.”

 

Hux wants to put his head down on Ren’s sweaty shoulder and laugh. Instead he pushes Ren down and to the side, watching the twin expressions of shock and delight that burst across his flushed face. Then Ren recovers, schools his expression into one of cool indifference, and leans back, arranging his hands comfortably behind his head.

 

Hux stands. The plastic bag is crumpled on the floor, its contents spilled across the carpet:  several travel-sized bottles of store-brand personal lubricant labelled _Premium_. It looks as though Ren swiped his arm blindly across the shelf and knocked the entire row into his basket.

 

“And here I thought you’d bought me flowers,” he says.

 

“I can do that,” Ren says, “and a fucking medal, too, depending.”

 

“Depending?”

 

He still has the presence of mind to bolt door and slide the chain across. The last thing he needs is a slack-jawed lackey opening the door to find him taking Ren carefully to pieces on the bed and shattering a bottle of champagne on the carpet. _Opa!_

 

He turns. Ren has stripped himself down and is lying fully nude across the centre of the bed, head still pillowed on one arm, looking heavy-eyed at the ceiling and stroking idly at himself. Every few seconds, the head of his cock peeps out from under his fingertips, red and wet against the taut white expanse of his stomach. Hux swallows.

 

He selects a bottle at random, without looking, eyes glued to Ren, and returns to the bed, feeling as though he is tottering, wading through syrup.

 

“Depending?” he says again, prompting. Christ, Jesus Christ, his voice is _cracking_. “On how well I do, you mean?”

 

“Yeah,” Ren says, meeting his eyes. “On how well you _bugger_ the shit outta me.”

 

“Well, I don’t want to do _that_ ,” Hux murmurs. “A thoroughly unappetising prospect.” He taps Ren’s flank. “Turn over, then,” he says, with a calm he doesn’t feel. “Hands and knees.”

 

Ren laughs, looking delighted with the proceedings, with himself, pleased as can be. In another moment Hux will crawl atop him to bite the smile from his lips and spend himself rutting hopelessly against Ren’s thigh, and that won’t do at all.

 

He steadies himself and snaps, “I said get on your fucking hands and knees.”

 

Ren inhales sharply and flips onto his stomach, cock dragging on the cream of the duvet. He raises himself up on his elbows and knees, arse in the air, forehead resting on his hands, clasped as though in supplication. The quality of the light has changed, the afternoon sun stretching long and golden into the room, falling across Ren’s naked body in almost laughably beautiful lines. His arse is practically haloed. Hux hears the spectral song of a distant angelic chorus and smirks to himself.

 

“What—fuck, what are you waiting for?” Ren says, starting to look up. He gasps and folds forward again as Hux slaps his arse, open-palmed. “Fuck!”

 

The lubricant is still warm from its journey through the Chicago summer, almost watery as Hux upends the bottle, pumps a silky glob into his palm, and rubs it between his fingers. Ren moans at the noise of the cap, rocking on his knees.

 

“Keep still,” Hux says, maliciously, and he presses his thumb against Ren’s hole.

 

“ _Ah_ ,” Ren gasps. “Yeah, yeah, come on. Hux—” But Hux is just holding his thumb there, rubbing little circles, tracing the rim again, spreading the slick. Ren groans, the muscles of his back contracting. “Hux, you—”

 

Hux replaces his thumb with an index finger and pushes in.

 

“Oh, _ff_ —Hux!”

 

“Be quiet,” Hux says, almost to himself. It’s so hot inside Ren’s body that he feels burned. He wants to cry out, too, wants to groan loudly and press his cheek against Ren’s arse, kiss the girdle of muscle at his hip and sink his teeth into it. But he won’t, he won’t. The moment he gives in, he’ll be lost forever.

 

Ren hisses something unintelligible through clenched teeth.

 

“Be quiet,” Hux repeats.

 

He pushes deeper, adding more lubricant, rubbing at the skin just behind Ren’s bollocks with the knuckles of his third and fourth fingers, and Ren is utterly, fantastically silent, breathing carefully, body braced against Hux’s ministrations. He glances at Ren’s face and sees it contorted, the eyes squeezed tightly shut, sees him biting his lip.

 

“Oh, Ren,” he says; the words are startled out of him.

 

“More,” Ren gasps, trembling. “More, more, I can take it.”

 

“Of course you can,” Hux says. “Of course you can, Ren,” and shushes him, gently, as he slips his third finger in along with the second. “Good—good—”

 

“I told you,” Ren manages, “I’m not interested in—”

 

“I don’t care what you’re interested in,” Hux says, slapping his arse again. “You’ll be good for me, won’t you, Ren,” he says, and Ren chokes and goes quiet.

 

Eagerness interferes with his pace, which grows frenzied; he adds another finger, staring in open-mouthed fascination at the way Ren’s body seems to swallow it up. His hole is red around Hux’s fingers, swollen and wet and almost twitching, as he moves his hips frantically, trying to meet the press of Hux’s fingers, trying to engulf him. The lubricant is dripping over Hux’s knuckles with every squelching thrust, and with each soft wet _squish_ , Ren shivers and _whimpers_.

 

“I ordered room service earlier,” Hux says, aiming for a conversational tone and achieving something approaching intoxication. “Before you arrived. But don’t worry, Ren,” he adds, “I’ve bolted the door.” He curls his fingers, deep, and Ren twitches and gasps. “Good thing, too. Imagine if someone came in and saw you like this, saw you on your hands and knees like this, spread open. Fucking yourself on my fingers.”

 

Ren moans into the duvet. His cock is leaking all over his stomach and the bed.

 

“Fuck me,” he says. “Fuck me, Hux, please.”

 

“I am,” Hux says, merciless. He pushes his fingers in until the rest of his hand is splayed open, palm and thumb and pinkie finger spread wide, flat against Ren’s arse. Ren shudders. “I am fucking you, aren’t I, Ren?”

 

“With your— _fuck_ —with your cock,” Ren gasps. “Put your cock in me. Oh, god.”

 

Hux pulls his fingers out, slowly, feeling the stretch and drag, feeling Ren squeezing so tightly around him; his body doesn’t want to let Hux go.

 

“Oh, god,” he echoes, inaudibly, and he starts to line himself up, sliding his cockhead up and down in the dribbling slick between Ren’s buttocks, catching the tip of himself on the rim of Ren’s hole again and again.

 

Ren starts to swear at him, then seems to change tack. “Please,” Ren says, “please fuck me, please, Hux, please.”

 

He must think Hux’s reluctance is part of the scene; Hux, meanwhile, seems to be having an out-of-body experience. He’s trying to think of ways not to come the moment he’s fully seated inside, but his mind is entirely blank. All he can see is Ren, spread beneath him, his legs taut and trembling in anticipation. And the molten summer sunlight shining down upon them, shining down from heaven, as it were.

 

He grips Ren’s hip with one hand and the base of his cock with the other, grits his teeth, and finally, finally, _finally_ , pushes in.

 

Ren cries out, seemingly in relief, and then cries out again, loud and ragged, as Hux slides all the way home, bottoming out, coming to rest with his hips flush against Ren’s arse. Stars burst behind his closed eyelids; he breathes in and in and in, swelling his lungs with air, but he can’t quite get enough oxygen.

 

Ren is babbling beneath him, shoulders bunched, hands fisting in the duvet. “Hux, Hux— _Hux_ —”

 

He moves slowly at first, jaw clenched against the unbearable heat and tightness, trying to get his bearings in a world that has suddenly and dizzyingly begun to spin around him, and then Ren seems to heave himself backward, impaling himself impossibly deep on Hux’s cock, and Hux shouts and starts to fuck Ren in earnest, thrusting faster and faster, until his bollocks are all but slapping against Ren’s arse and Ren is nearly keening.

 

“Oh, fuck,” Ren moans, “oh, fuck, yeah, _yeah_ , Hux, right there, right there, right—”

 

He can’t keep up the pace. His muscles are already starting to burn, thighs and calves verging on a cramp. Ren doesn’t seem to mind. He rocks back and forth on the bed, fucking himself on Hux with all the strength and power of an athlete, gasping and groaning with abandon. He does this all with one arm rigid on the bed; the other is curled close to his body, muscles rippling as he tugs furiously at his own cock.

 

“ _Hux_ ,” he gasps, “I need—”

 

“What do you need?” Hux says. He sucks down a breath and renews his efforts, digging his hands into Ren’s hips as he fucks him, with deep, ball-slapping, bed-creaking thrusts. “What do you need, Ren?”

 

Ren cries out, wordless and incoherent. His arm buckles, and he topples forward into the bed, face pressed into a pillow, arse in the air, pulling at himself now with both hands. The red flush has spread across his shoulders, down his back. The whole of his body is gleaming with sweat—gleaming and shaking with his desperate need. Every thrust tears another noise from his throat, agonized and helpless.

 

Muffled:  “More— _more_ —”

 

“Brat,” Hux says. He seizes Ren by the hair and pulls tight, dragging Ren’s head up, forcing Ren’s spine into an uncomfortable arch.

 

“ _Oh_ ,” Ren cries, ragged, “oh—oh, _shit_ —”

 

Hux thrusts hard, grinding against him.

 

“Deep,” Ren groans, “Hux, you’re so deep in me,” and then his voice flies off into a garbled exclamation as he comes, hips jerking, hands stuttering, his body tightening mercilessly around Hux’s cock. Hux curses at the sensation; dimly, through the ringing in his ears, he hears Ren huff out a breathless laugh. He pushes Ren’s shoulders into the mattress and ploughs into him as everything goes white.

 

The ringing subsides; his vision returns. Ren is lying under him, arms crushed beneath his body, head turned and staring glassily at the window. His mouth is open, heaving for breath.

 

“Ren,” he says, squeezing his hip, “Ren.”

 

Ren doesn’t reply; he lies there smiling to himself. Hux sits up far enough to be able to trace the length of Ren’s spine upwards, and then he curves his hand over the blade of Ren’s left shoulder, bracing against him so that he can pull out.

 

Ren stirs, finally, turning his head to swear into the pillow. “Mmh,” he says, or something like it.

 

Hux looks at the come and lubricant shining on his cock, only just beginning to soften, and on Ren’s quiescent thighs, dripping down onto the sheets.

 

Mesmerised, feeling almost maddened, he slips his fingers back into Ren’s twitching, fucked out hole, stretching him wide and rubbing at the mess inside. Ren jolts and makes a smothered noise approaching a sob.

 

“Feels good,” Ren says. “Oh, _fuck_.” His body tightens, the groan rumbling out of him. He pushes himself back onto his hands and knees. “You wanna go again, Hux? You wanna—oh, fuck yeah, _fuck_ yeah _—_ ”

 

Hux finds the tie puddled by his elbow, a pool of crimson. He holds it in his free hand a moment, considering the soft silken weft, the expensive weight of it—a gift from a girlfriend, _from Rey_ , he thinks—and then he wads it up and crams it into Ren’s gaping mouth.

 

Ren’s eyes fly open, indignant. He makes a stifled sound of protest.

 

“ _Try_ to control yourself,” Hux says, holding the tie in as Ren tries to spit it out, feeling the slow seep of saliva as it begins to dampen the fabric. Wet at both ends, he thinks, stupidly, and _fuck, fuck_ , and he straightens his fingers and thrusts them in. Ren quakes and moans softly through the gag.

 

“My god, Ren,” Hux murmurs, “you just can’t keep quiet, can you?”

 

He wants dearly to shove himself back inside, push the drooling cries out of Ren with his own prick, but he’ll need a little more time. Certainly more time than Ren, who, wanton, is already more than half-hard again, swaying back and forth, pushing his arse in the air and opening right up for the surge of Hux’s fingers.  

 

“Do you think you can come again?” Hux says, almost kindly, musing. “So soon? Oh, Ren. I’m _impressed._ ” Ren goes rigid on all fours, breathing harshly through his nose, body braced now as if anticipating a blow, thighs tensed to spring. “Is that what you want, Ren? To come again—on my fingers—” He accompanies each word with a thrust. “Just—like— _this—_ ”

 

Ren cries out, faintly, beyond words, and then goes quiet, all sound extinguished but for the wet noise of Hux’s pumping hand.  

 

“That’s better,” Hux says. He feels stupefied, bombed out; his voice is raw and slurring. “That’s better, just like that, don’t make another sound.”

 

He drags the tie from Ren’s mouth. It slops away, leaving a trail down Ren’s chin. Ren pants for breath and bites at his lips obstinately, shining and sticky, staring at Hux in mute appeal. His face is red. There are tears in his eyes.

 

“ _Good_ ,” Hux says. It’s all he can manage before his voice fails him. He lunges forward, wrapping his hand, and the tie, around Ren’s prick, and starts to stroke him. Even through the thick material, he can feel Ren, heavy in his hand, hard as steel and beginning to twitch.

 

“Good,” he says again, “ _good_ boy.”

 

Ren simply trembles, transfixed, evidently unable to decide whether he wants to buck forward into Hux’s fist or continue skewering himself on Hux’s fingers. Hux, magnanimously, spares him the trouble of having to choose:  he squeezes Ren’s cock in his fist and jams his fingers in as far as they will go, crooking them deep in the tight heat of Ren’s arse, and Ren convulses with a ragged exhalation, coming in spurts into Hux’s silk-covered palm.

 

Hux releases the tie, and it drops to the duvet, destroyed. Ren is actually silent now, head hanging, so strung out he’s shivering from head to toe, mouth open and drooling as he tries to catch his breath. His arms give way, and he slumps forward.

 

After one last lazy stroke inside, Hux withdraws his fingers—Ren gasps—and collapses beside Ren’s prone body. He kisses Ren’s ear, his neck, his shoulder, tasting salt. Ren shifts, turning his face toward him, and Hux leans in to kiss the bitten edge of Ren’s mouth and the tears gathering at the seams of his closed eyes, and then he rolls over, flat onto his back, and falls asleep.

 

 

 

 

He wakes, minutes or hours later, to find Ren sucking him off.

 

“What are you doing?” he murmurs, stopping himself before he can thrust all the way up into Ren’s throat. He can feel Ren’s tongue working around him. He reaches down and cups Ren’s face with both hands, stalling his progress.

 

Ren lifts off with a wet noise. “What’s it look like?” he says. “Take a wild guess. Go on. I can give you a hint, if you need one,” he adds. He strains toward Hux’s cockhead with the very tip of his tongue; unable to reach it, he licks at the edge of Hux’s hand instead.

 

“You’re insatiable,” Hux says.

 

Ren looks at him, unsmiling. “Just making up for lost time.”

 

The lights of the city are shining outside. It’s not quite dusk, not yet, but the sky is darkening, the bruised lilac of the afternoon deepening into pavonine blue. The threat of thunder seems to have passed. Red and green reflect across Ren’s irises. _Stop? Go?_

 

“Stop that. Come here,” Hux says.

 

“I want you to fuck me again,” Ren says. He hesitates, frowns. “With your—I don’t want your fingers.”

 

“Yes,” Hux says, impatiently, “yes, I understand. Come here.”

 

“Oh,” Ren says. He scrambles atop Hux, and the lights flash on his teeth as he grins. “Tired you out, huh.”

 

“Utterly and entirely,” Hux says, and then he has to close his eyes and throw his head back as Ren sinks down onto him, so eager for it he’s already beginning to pant.

 

“What time is it?” Hux manages.

 

“Seriously?” Ren says.

 

“ _Yes_ ,” Hux says, punctuating this with a little thrust. He slips even more deeply into Ren’s body, and they both freeze and groan at how easy it is, at how wet and open Ren is for him. “Yes, seriously.”

 

“I don’t—” Ren nearly stammers, eyes widening as Hux begins to bounce up into him, driving himself up off the bed. “I don’t—oh—oh, Hux— _ungh_ —”

 

“Fuck, Ren,” Hux says. “Fuck, just look at you. You’re swallowing me right up.”

 

“Yeah,” Ren agrees, mouth dropping open. He’s fucking his own fist again, in short, erratic bursts, unable to settle on a rhythm he likes. Hux thrusts up so hard his own arse leaves the bed, and Ren collapses forward, cock sliding hot and heavy against Hux’s stomach while Hux drives into him. He slides his hands into Hux’s hair and bites at his ear and neck, gasping idiotically, “Yeah— _yeah_ —oh, god, yeah,” before remembering himself and choking off into obedient silence.

 

“That’s it,” Hux says. He’s gripping onto Ren’s delectable arse with both hands. “That’s it, Ren, just like that, keep quiet for me, you’re doing so well.”

 

Ren lets out a moan at this, hips stuttering. “Yeah?” he gasps.

 

“Yes,” Hux says, rocking up. “Yes. Good boy, doing exactly what I want, fucking yourself on me—”

 

“Holy shit,” Ren chokes out.

 

“You like it so much,” Hux says, turning Ren’s head to the side so that he can whisper into his ear. “You love it, don’t you, Ren, you love having me in you, stretching you open like this, pushing in so deep. You want me to use you like this. Fuck you until it stings. Fuck you until—”

 

“Wanna come,” Ren gasps. “Touch me, Hux, touch me.”

 

Hux reaches down, fumbling until his thumb brushes against his own cock, slopping in and out of Ren, feeling the place where they are joined.

 

“Fuck,” Ren swears, “not _there_ —”

 

“What a greedy little hole,” Hux says, hardly able to believe the stream of filth pouring from his mouth. Ren clenches around him, clearly relishing the words, leaning into them as if nuzzling into a caress. “Just wants to be filled, doesn’t it, Ren—my god, how you must have ached for it, walking around the office just throbbing for it, so desperate for my cock—”

 

Ren is rocketing back to meet his thrusts now, pushing his arse against him as far as he can go. He knows it isn’t deep enough; he can hear the whine building in Ren’s chest.

 

“Lie back,” he orders. “Lie down.”

 

Ren goes down like a felled tree, moaning in dismay as Hux slips out of him.

 

“Spread,” Hux says, nudging at his legs. “Wider.”

 

Ren moves, but not quickly enough, his movements languid, indolent with lust.

 

Hux reaches up to fondle his chest, palming at a pectoral muscle, so large it fills his hand, and thumbs at his nipple. “Are you listening to me?” he says, and tweaks it cruelly, watching as Ren’s eyes flutter and his mouth parts.

 

His legs part, too, and Hux pushes in. There’s hardly any resistance at all.

 

“Christ,” Hux says, closing his eyes for a moment, gathering the scattered pieces of himself, “Christ, _Ren_ —”

 

“Oh, _oh_ ,” Ren says, gulping for breath, eyes all but rolling back in his skull, and Hux kisses away the next sound that comes from him, swallows it down, and pounds violently into him. They’ll both be sore tomorrow, he thinks, but he wants Ren to be sorer, he wants to give better than he gets.

 

Ren is so near the edge of the bed that his head slips off the side of it with Hux’s next thrust, hair cascading toward the floor, throat exposed, shining white. Hux bites at it, sucks at Ren’s skin with bruising force, and Ren spasms and crosses his ankles around Hux’s waist, perhaps in an effort to keep from sliding all the way down to the carpet, or perhaps because he wants to drag Hux down with him.

 

“Harder,” Ren says, voice faint, “harder, I want— _ah,_ Hux— _Hux_ —”

 

 _What time is it?_ he mocks himself. _What does it matter?_ He’ll be here for all eternity, and gladly, with Ren’s legs locked around his back, urging him on.

 

 

 

 

Room service have wisely left the sandwiches just beyond the door. Ren, naked and filthy, come drying stickily down the inside of his thighs, inhales half the platter and drinks nearly an entire bottle of champagne on his own while Hux looks on, astonished.

 

“What?” Ren says, between bites. “I’m fucking hungry. I haven’t eaten a fucking thing all day.”

 

“Why?” Hux says. A split second later, he understands.

 

Ren glances at him, nods at the look on his face, and goes on anyway. “Because I didn’t want to shit on your dick,” he says.

 

“Delightful,” Hux says. He’s finally seen the clock on the bedside table:  his flight left three hours ago. He turns his phone over and over in his palm. “I’ll have to request a new booking.”

 

“Why?” Ren says, parroting him.

 

“Why?” Hux repeats. “Because I’m needed in Paris tomorrow morning.”

 

“No one needs you,” Ren says brutally.

 

Hux raises an eyebrow at him. “That’s not what you were saying a mere twenty minutes ago,” he says. “In fact, if I recall correctly, Ren, you’ve been singing an entirely different tune all afternoon. All _year_. Singing like a bloody nightingale.”

 

“No one needs you _in_ _Paris_ ,” Ren clarifies, reddening only slightly. Brazen little arsehole. “They just need a scapegoat.”

 

“Thank you,” Hux says primly, “but Starkiller—”

 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Hux, I’m not talking about Starkiller,” Ren says. He takes one last gulp and sets the bottle down, pushing it aside with a careless sweep of his arm; it teeters toward the edge of the television console. “You’re always riding my ass—” Hux snorts “—always riding my ass about reading my fucking emails, but you’re the one who never reads _your_ fucking emails. Fuck.”

 

“I fail to see the need to read any more of your worthless memoranda,” Hux says, but without any real heat. He can still feel Ren writhing beneath him, crying out for him—literally crying with pleasure, the tears glistening in his eyelashes. The memory of this, of this sublime day, will sustain him for another thirty years. “You’ve driven us all mad with your obscure citations. In fact—” and he can no longer suppress his smile “—in fact, I’m beginning to think you’re the real reason behind Dopheld’s resignation.”

 

“Poe Dameron,” Ren says, and Hux stops smiling. Ren shrugs. “Check your email,” he says. He picks up the bottle again and chugs.

 

Hux lifts his phone and unlocks it with numb fingers. Two alerts have come in from the research centre in the last hour. One article is indeed from Above the Law; the other is from the fucking Financial Times. Dameron has broken his story, and more reputable news organizations are beginning to confirm it. As he reads, another alert arrives, this time from Reuters. There will be more tomorrow, as London wakes, from the Sun and the Daily Mail, screaming about rampant corruption, heartless fat cats, and, as the Paris office has apparently been raided by authorities, the French.

_Three current and former executives of the struggling U.K. law firm Sloane Gallius Snoke have been charged with lying to banks about the financial health of their firm…_

 

Snoke, Phasma, and Moden Canady.                                      

 

_—thanks in part to several key emails forwarded by a former SGS employee._

 

 _Mitaka?_ Hux thinks. Or—

 

He remembers the unfamiliar laptop bag swinging from Phasma’s shoulder, her furtive glances, the way her people strode carelessly by the empty office on his floor, loaded with banker boxes, all for show, all for show.

 

“Finn,” he says. “ _Finn._ ”

 

He looks up.

 

Ren is watching him, pinning him to the wall with his black stare. “Snoke’s finished,” he says. “There’s nothing to go back to. Unless you feel like picking up the pieces.” He drinks. “That is, if the cops don’t pick you up first.”

 

“How did you know?” Hux says.

 

“Went to law school with Dameron. We go way back.”

 

 _I knew it,_ Hux thinks dully. He says, “And he warned you? As what, a courtesy?”

 

“Not exactly,” Ren says. “More like I got it out of him.”

 

 _Got it out of him_. Hux wonders what this entailed. An interrogation. A confrontation. A meeting of old friends, perhaps, the last time Ren was in Chicago, one plying the other with alcohol. _Got it out of him_. Maybe Ren fucked it out of him. He’s seen Dameron’s Above the Law headshot:  handsome in a scruffy, disorganised sort of way, with a smile that could break hearts.

 

“Fuck’s sake, Hux,” Ren says. “I know what you’re thinking. Not like that. Not like that.”

 

“Never mind how you got it out of him,” Hux says. His incredulity is growing. “Never mind all that. You knew what Dameron was planning, you knew when he meant to publish—and you kept quiet about it! You knew about it for months, and you never—”

 

“What was I supposed to do?” Ren says. “Take it to Snoke? _Warn_ him? Why? I don’t owe him anything.”

 

“He took you in,” Hux says.

 

Ren frowns at him. “Took me in? Like I was some kind of orphan, with nowhere else to go?”

 

 _I was_.

 

 _Nowhere else to go._ He remembers the words creaking from Snoke’s mouth, mossy, with the breath of the crypt already in them.

 

“I’m not delusional,” Ren says suddenly. “In case you were wondering.”   

 

“I have wondered, now and again,” Hux says.

 

Ren ignores the jab. “I know the real reason Snoke hired me. I know it’s not because I’m an amazing fucking lawyer,” he says. Hux goggles at him openly, but Ren isn’t looking at him anymore; he’s staring at something Hux can’t see, staring a hole into the carpet. “He just wanted access to those sweet, sweet Vader clients. Joke’s on him, though; my family fuckin’ disowned me. And my mom doesn’t even touch the Vader stuff. She hates—hated it. She runs a fucking non-profit now.” He clears his throat uncomfortably. “So I hear, anyway.”

 

“Disowned,” Hux says.

 

“Yeah,” Ren says. “Haven’t talked to ’em in years. I figured Snoke would let it go after a while.” Drink. “He didn’t.”

_Was a pilot_ , Hux remembers, _was a pilot_.

“I thought your father was dead,” he says.

 

“Well, I gave it my best fucking shot,” Ren says. He glances at Hux. “Jesus, Hux. Not really. I just decked him.” His gaze grows unfocused, distant. “Went down like a sack of potatoes. And then—” He stops.

 

“Perhaps he deserved it,” Hux says, thinking of Brendol, of how beautifully the flesh of Brendol’s face would have distorted under his knuckles. Grown up, taller than Brendol ever was, he might have given better than he ever got.

 

“That’s debatable,” Ren says, “but thanks, I guess.” He looks back at Hux. “You didn’t warn Snoke either.”

 

“No,” Hux says. He looks at his hands, palms outward, fingers curled:  reposed, useless. _Why didn’t I warn him?_ “No, I suppose I didn’t. Starkiller and Dameron. Two failures on my hands.”

 

Ren rolls his eyes. “You’re a real fucking headcase, you know that, Hux?” he says. “It’s all so fucking black and white with you, light and dark, like there’s nothing in between. You think you’ve chosen a side, you think there’s a side to choose. The villain of your own story. It was just a job.”

 

He holds the bottle out, and after a paralysed moment, Hux takes it.

 

“Now what?” he says.

 

“Well, we have the room until the end of the week,” Ren says.

 

“What?” Hux says. “On whose tab, exactly? On whose fucking tab? On the firm’s tab?” He brandishes his phone at Ren. The notifications are still flying in, one after another. “On our bankrupt firm’s tab, Ren?”

 

“Not my firm anymore.” Ren shrugs. “We could crash with Rey. Probably wouldn’t be too happy about that, though. Either of you. Her apartment’s kind of small.”

 

“Rey!” He’s entirely forgotten. “Bloody hell, Ren, what are you going to do about Rey?”

 

“About Rey?” Ren says, looking puzzled. “I wasn’t planning on doing anything about her.”

 

“Are you mad?” Hux says. “Break it off with her. Call her right now and tell her you’re finished. I insist. I don’t—I don’t—” He steels himself, forces it out. “I don’t intend to share.”

 

He takes a swig of champagne, then, to hide his embarrassment, but when he looks back over the lip of the bottle, he sees Ren staring at him, completely poleaxed.

 

“Holy shit, Hux,” Ren says. “Rey and I—Rey and I aren’t—Jesus Christ, Hux, she’s just a friend.”

 

“You ‘go way back,’” Hux says, blank. The ground is shifting again beneath him. Continents are fracturing; whole islands are rising from the sea, one after another, new points on a map, new stars in the sky. Phasma, bold, bright, brash Phasma, concealing everything from him, hoarding secrets, and Kylo Ren laying himself bare, offering up his mouth to be bitten. _I never knew,_ he thinks, _I never noticed._

 

“Yeah,” Ren says. “Way back. She’s like a sister.”

 

“People have slept with their friends before,” Hux says. _And kissed their sisters, too._

 

“Not me, I haven’t,” Ren says. He looks away. There’s a small red bruise forming on his throat, too high for any collar to conceal. He rubs at it absently and looks back, meeting Hux’s eyes. The façade begins to crack, just a bit, at the corner of his mouth, and then he grins, savage. “Just my co-workers.”

 

 

 

 

Hux falls asleep again soon after, sprawled atop the duvet, sleeping like the dead, and dreaming of them, too.

 

He’s long forgotten his mother’s voice, forgotten the sight and smell of her, but he remembers this:  the light of a faraway Saturday morning shining red through his eyelids and the drift of her hand, insubstantial as a breeze, stirring through his hair while he lies drowsing in bed, snug and safe in the knowledge that his father is working through another weekend.

 

Soothed in sleep, he feels the ghostly hand threading through his hair again, a wholly different sensation now:  the touch firm, the fingers rough, the palm callused, one thumb tracing a rasping line across his temple, over and over.

 

This time, when he wakes, sometime after midnight, he finds Ren lounging at the edge of the bed watching television, thoroughly sozzled on the remaining bottles of champagne and sniggering at what appears to be a weather forecast.

 

“Ren,” he says, voice cracked. “Turn that off.”

 

Ren just laughs. He points at the screen. “Good fucking luck getting to Paris now,” he says. Hux follows his finger, blearily, and stares.

 

A volcano has erupted in Iceland, grounding all air travel over the Continent.

 

Hux reads silently through all the letters in the name of the volcano, unable to piece them together into coherent syllables. On the screen, the newscaster is experiencing similar difficulties. Is the intervention cosmic or comedic? No matter. The reprieve is temporary. All the same, relief seeps through him.

 

A few days in Chicago with Ren. They may even leave the bed, eventually.

 

“Ren,” he says again. He injects a bit of command into his voice. “Turn that off. Come here.”

 

He watches as Ren goes still. He counts one breath, then another, swelling Ren’s powerful shoulders; then Ren hits a button on the remote, and the television flicks off, leaving a white line in his vision. Ren discards the remote and crawls toward Hux, the alcohol sharp on his breath. Hux flinches from it, wincing.

 

“No more flying,” Ren says, flopping down beside him. “Lucky Hux.”

 

 _Lucky Hux,_ indeed. The narrowness of his escape is not lost upon him. He’d be up to his eyeballs in fraud, too, cut down in his prime like poor old Phasma, loyal captain of Snoke’s Riesengarde, with glittering cuffs clapped on her glittering wrists, if Snoke hadn’t cast him aside, hadn’t ordered him to tether himself to Ren, if he hadn’t spent the last year and a half being driven to distraction by Kylo Ren, by his infuriatingly imperfect legal writing and his infuriatingly perfect arse.

 

The thought of acknowledging his debt or, heaven forbid, expressing his gratitude aloud—even of stewing silently in it for a moment—makes bile rise in his throat. But when he does turn to look at Ren, naked and sprawled out beside him, tapping out a staccato beat against the duvet cover with the pads of his fingers, heedless of the questionable stains and textures, he feels nothing but a pleasant lurch in the pit of his stomach.

 

The sensation of falling no longer frightens him. He knows that he can, at any time, comfort himself with a touch:  place the flat of his hand on the body that has caused him so much aggravation, let his palm drift over the muscle and feel Ren’s skin heat beneath his fingers, watch the parting of Ren’s lips, the darkening of his eyes, the deepening of Ren’s desire.

 

He’ll have to go back, of course, and sooner rather than later, if only, as Ren said, to pick up the pieces, or to be picked up himself:  to be taken into custody, perhaps, upon arrival, and questioned about his role in the debacle. He may need to engage a solicitor of his own, depending on which way the wind is blowing.

 

He wonders whether there will be anyone left in the office at all when he returns. He rather doubts it. Snoke’s chair will be empty. His for the taking, at least for a moment.

 

“The ash will settle, Ren,” Hux says.

 

The dust, too:  it will gather across the arms and seams of Snoke’s gaudy high seat, coat his desk, drape like a curtain over the last thirty years of Hux’s life, muffling all sound, wiping everything away.

 

The past is dead, and he will let it lie where it falls, a broken corpse.

 

The Paris office fades from his mind. He can see the future now, bright with the lights flashing on and off in time to the tinny Christmas music being piped into O’Hare International’s famous rainbow walkway, spiralling overhead as Hux glides beneath, suitcase in tow.

 

Months from now, he will ride the escalator to the surface and emerge into the grey morning, where the Chicago skies will be low and soft with the threat of impending snowfall. The screaming winds that buffeted his airplane thirty minutes before will blast against his face, leeching away all warmth.

 

Months from now, he’ll see Ren first, long before Ren spots him, a dark shape in the wavering light, underdressed, waiting with his hands jammed in his pockets and his suit jacket hopelessly rumpled, his hair flying in the wind, his breath puffing out in huge shivering clouds that will hang about him, wreathing his body.

 

And Ren will sense his presence, somehow:  sense him and turn.

 

“The ash will settle,” Hux repeats.

 

“Mm,” Ren says. “Maybe it will.”

 

“Until then,” Hux starts to say, but Ren is already straddling him, leaning in, his hot boozy mouth sliding open against Hux’s lips, soft and slippery. Hux reaches up, twisting his fingers into Ren’s hair, and pulls him down.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I wrote an entire 24k lawyer au without a single mention of the billable hour. (“What are you gonna do, sue me?” said the writer who was sued.)
> 
> Still very amused that much of the plot depended upon Hux being so utterly distracted by his all-consuming, maddening desire to fuck Kylo Ren that he literally failed to notice the massive financial fraud happening under his nose. This also saved me the trouble of having to come up with the details of said massive financial fraud (though I did have [a](%E2%80%9C) [few](%E2%80%9C) [models](%E2%80%9C)), so three cheers for Hux’s demented tunnel vision! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!


End file.
